


The Rule of a God

by tastewithouttalent



Series: The Moments We Touch [4]
Category: Soul Eater
Genre: Blow Jobs, Established Relationship, Exhibitionism, Hand Jobs, Inline with canon, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-25
Updated: 2013-11-29
Packaged: 2018-01-02 15:19:32
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 10
Words: 24,555
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1058351
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tastewithouttalent/pseuds/tastewithouttalent
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“‘I needed someone in control...the rule of a god* one who reigned without ego.’” Stein and Spirit immediately following the Kishin’s defeat.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Heat

Spirit isn’t sure if it’s nerves or pain that are making his hands shake when he arrives at Stein’s laboratory two days after the Kishin’s defeat. The world is painfully bright at the edges, crystalline and sharp like it could shatter at any moment, and gravity is not quite behaving as it ought, but he said he would come and he wants to come and he emphatically  _doesn’t_  want to admit he might need help to get through the city, so he walks the distance alone.

It takes a long time. He’s pretty sure he’s going more slowly than usual, or that time is stretching strangely long, but even after all the effort it takes to get to his destination he nearly turns around once he’s there. Spirit has had a day to reflect over recent events, after sleeping straight through the first 24 hours once he confirmed Maka was safe and sane, and reflection has made everything seem somewhat surreal. He  _must_  have misunderstood Stein. There must have been some level of misinterpretation, something that he didn’t fully comprehend, but he has turned over Stein’s affirmative, that  _smile_  on the meister’s face, the way Stein’s eyes lingered against his mouth, and he can’t find any weak point in the claim that Stein  _wants_  him, has  _been_  wanting him all this time.

Maybe it’s a joke. Maybe Stein has achieved new levels of cruelty and is  _teasing_  him, maybe the meister has misjudged “vicious” for “funny.” That seems almost possible, and Spirit spends his long trek out to the lab telling himself that’s what is going on and bracing himself for cold amusement. But he still goes. He can’t not.

For all his determination, it is very hard to knock on the front door. The lab is as oversized as it always has been, immune to the shrinking effect adulthood has on childish memories, and the sound of his fist is swallowed up by the building until he can barely hear it past the ringing in his ears. The sun is blistering hot on the top of his head and he can feel sweat prickling up under the fabric of his shirt and jacket, but it is better to sweat under clothes than to feel the sunlight on his still-raw skin, and it feels like protection anyway, the long line of buttons and the collar and the tie and the jacket all as much a shield as the bandages under the cloth.

The door opens and Spirit’s stomach drops, but there is no chance to abort now, he is trapped where he stands. Stein is shadowed by the cover of the lab, backlit by the unnatural green light of the interior, and he isn’t laughing, just looking at Spirit past glass made entirely clear with darkness. The shade of the interior looks amazing, it draws Spirit’s gaze as much as Stein’s face does, and then Stein steps aside to let him in without saying anything.

Spirit comes forward and Stein shuts the door behind him. The shift from outdoor heat to the dark cool of the lab is shocking, washing relief over his body even while the skin under his clothes begs for freedom. He sighs, speaks before his new shyness can get the better of him.

“Thanks. It’s hot out there.”

“Is it?”

Spirit turns to look at Stein. The meister is just looking at him, still standing by the door, hands in his pockets and nothing much on his face. Spirit doesn’t know what he expected or hoped for -- maybe for Stein to shove him against the wall and stick his tongue down Spirit’s throat, maybe for the meister to quirk an eyebrow and laugh -- but this is neither of the possibilities he was ready for, the two of them just  _standing_  in the hallway  _watching_  each other.

Stein moves without speaking, walks past Spirit farther into the lab, and the weapon pushes himself forward to follow after a moment of hesitation. The rooms are grey as ever but for a hint of color -- pink, green, yellow -- but there is less visible, less of Marie in the space, and Spirit wishes he felt less deeply satisfied by that. Even what is there feels like less of an invasion, now, with Stein right in front of him and the feel of the meister all through the building, his wavelength spreading through the stitches on the walls and the cracks in the ceiling and breathing in time with the lab.

The light in the room where Stein finally stops is brighter than elsewhere; it crackles into Spirit’s head, stabbing pain before he blinks away and stops looking directly at the fixture. The meister turns away from him and Spirit is left standing awkwardly by the entry, looking at the floor and flinching from the light and beginning to regret he came.

“Spirit.”

He jerks up, as startled by the sound of his name as if he had forgotten the meister was there. Stein is facing him again, and his coat is gone so Spirit can see the stitches along his arms and he looks perfectly, entirely calm. It should be frustrating, to know that Stein is steady and stable while Spirit feels like his head is going to explode from ricocheting thoughts and rising panic. It is not. He breathes deep, inhales Stein’s mood from the surrounding air, and when he exhales his heart is pounding a little less fast.

“Take off your jacket,” Stein says, and then fast, before the weapon can more than open his eyes wide, “So I can check your injuries.” Spirit still blushes, although he didn’t say anything in response, but Stein looks away from his reaction and only the very corner of his mouth turns up, so Spirit only  _considers_  dying of embarrassment and doesn’t actually.

It is difficult to get his coat off. He has to bend his shoulders back and that pulls at the tender burn over his chest, but he got it on in the first place and manages to get it off again without more than a moment of cringing. The tie is easier, the shirt fastest of all. He is distantly aware that he should feel self-conscious, but Stein’s busying himself with something behind him and it is easy to drop into professionalism, even with the air in the room going heavy with tension.

Stein doesn’t turn until Spirit has tossed his shirt over the back of a chair. When he does his eyes drop immediately to the bandages, don’t linger on Spirit’s face at all, and that is a relief too, if somewhat anticlimatic.

“I’ll have to take those off,” he says, turning back to rummage through a mismatched pile of tools before coming back around with scissors. Spirit flinches from the cold metal against his skin, but not as much as from the contact of Stein’s fingers steady on his waist. The meister is very close, focused on what he is doing, but Spirit’s attention is all elsewhere, on the shift of hair when Stein dips his head and the even pace of his breath on Spirit’s skin. The weapon shuts his eyes, lets the rhythm of Stein’s inhales set his own, and by the time the last of the impromptu bandages come free his heart rate is very close to normal again.

And then Stein’s fingers press against his stomach and he flinches back hard, not from the rush of tingle-pleasant adrenaline but from  _pain_  sharp and stabbing.

“Ow!” The operating table behind him hits the back of his legs, catches his almost-falling weight. “That  _hurt_!”

Stein straightens, raises an eyebrow. “You probably have at least a few cracked ribs, Spirit. I would be surprised if they  _don’t_  hurt.” He steps in and the table behind Spirit starts to feel a lot less like support and a lot more like a wall. “Can you hold still while I see how badly hurt you are?”

Spirit can’t quite talk around how dry his mouth has gone but he nods, sharply in spite of his blush, and Stein reaches back out to touch him again. He is more gentle this time, though any pressure on the dark bruises is still agonizing, but Spirit shuts his mouth and fixes his eyes on the wall over Stein’s shoulder and keeps quiet through sheer force of will.

“What happened?” Stein asks after a moment. Spirit doesn’t want to talk, can’t stay entirely quiet if he opens his mouth, but he answers anyway, obedience to his meister and obedience to a doctor mingling in one.

“The Kishin fired at Azusa and Kid.” He doesn’t remember this directly, but Azusa told him after the crisis was past. He’s not sure she is ever going to forgive him for indirectly saving her life. “Lord Death put himself in the path of the shot to protect them.” A bruise flares hot and Spirit hisses in pain. “Ahhh. Uh. What what I saying?”

“Self-sacrifice on Kid’s behalf,” Stein offers.

“Right. Lord Death took the worst of it, and I was in weapon form at the time, but I didn’t think he was going to survive it.” He laughs weakly. “I’m still surprised he did.”

“You  _stayed_  in weapon form?” Stein’s hands slide up, along the bottom edge of Spirit’s ribcage.

The weapon nods. “Yeah. I stayed in scythe-form for as long as I was conscious.”

If Stein weren’t so close, if his mouth weren’t on level with Spirit’s collarbone, Spirit wouldn’t hear the hiss of breath at this last statement. But he is, and he does. There is a pause, and when Stein speaks his voice is deliberately level.

“You would have died if you hadn’t.” He sounds calm. Spirit can feel his hands shifting, can feel the tremble in fingers that have been steady as long as he has ever known the meister.

“Yeah.” Spirit forces a laugh, tries to lighten the mood. “Good thing I did, I guess.”

Stein’s head is still tipped down, but his hands have stopped moving on Spirit’s skin. He inhales, deep and slow, and when he sighs the cool of his breath gusts all along bruised skin.

“Good thing.” He echoes, and then he brings his chin up. The light just over Spirit’s head catches the meister’s glasses for a moment before it slides off, and oh he is  _very_  close Spirit hadn’t quite processed how incredibly  _close_  he is, and then Stein leans in over the remaining distance and kisses him.

Spirit’s brain fizzes in five directions at once, trying to note every detail of the moment but only catching unrelated flashes. Stein’s hands are still against his stomach and his hip and the pressure hurts with the dull ache of a bad bruise. His lips are cool and gentle and still, like he’s afraid to act further or doesn’t know what to do. Spirit’s eyes are open, he can see the shape of Stein’s ear and the curl of silver hair blurry with proximity and

Stein is kissing him. Stein is  _kissing_  him.

The details flood away in a rush of adrenaline and Spirit’s hands are against Stein’s hair and he is arching forward, pulling Stein in towards him and sliding his lips hot over Stein’s. Stein lets him go, hands coming loose in surprise but Spirit knows what to do, he can lead from here. His eyes shut, his attention narrows to the friction on his mouth and the blood rising blistering under all his skin, and the contact with Stein’s body hurts over his bruises but not enough to push him away. Shaking fingers come against Spirit’s back carefully, feather-light and hesitant. Spirit hums against Stein’s mouth and he can feel the meister startle, almost pull back in surprise before his hands confirm the contact, slide hot over the weapon’s back. He smiles against Stein’s mouth, opens his lips and traces his tongue over Stein’s, and the meister gasps, mouth coming open in surprise. Spirit’s fingers find the threading of stitches buried under silver hair, the tracery of faint scars against his fingernails, and Stein tips his head, angles his scalp towards Spirit’s touch like  _yielding_  and Spirit can’t catch his breath at all.

He isn’t the one who pulls back, though. Spirit would stay where he is until he drops unconscious from hyperventilation, but it is Stein who draws away, gasps for air like he’s drowning. Spirit leans in again, trailing his meister’s mouth like an addict. His mouth curves into a grin between them, eyes still mostly shut so he can focus on the pattern of Stein’s stuttering breath on his skin.

“You have to breathe through your nose, you know.”

“I don’t know.” The words come fast with sincerity but it is the tone, the  _shake_  under Stein’s voice that blows Spirit’s attention so far away that he is pulling in for another kiss before he processes the admission and draws back, blinking fast. Stein just watches him, wide eyes glowing with color, pupils dilated wide and dark, his ever-controlled mouth soft and relaxed. It takes a moment before Spirit can recollect his thoughts.

“You’ve never kissed someone before?”

Stein’s gaze has landed on Spirit’s mouth, and Spirit is fairly sure the meister doesn’t  _mean_  to lick his lower lip like that when he shakes his head in the negative, but the lack of intention does nothing to stop the responsive fire that curls up the weapon’s spine.

“Oh,” he says, and there should be something more there, some sort of apology or sympathy or  _something_ , but all Spirit can feel is jealously grateful and thrilled with possibilities. “I guess I’ll just have to  _teach_  you then.”

He comes forward and Stein meets him, tipping his head in imitation of Spirit’s motion and fitting their lips together again. The meister’s hands skim up over Spirit’s back and shoulders to dig into his hair and for a minute there is nothing in Spirit’s thoughts but soft hair against his palms and the pressure of Stein’s mouth on his and the tingle of fingers across his scalp.

Then the meister pulls away  _again_ , and Spirit whimpers this time, tries to pull him back by his hair, but Stein resists and when he speaks his voice is very nearly focused and barely shakes at all.

“Spirit.”

“Stein.”

“How are you feeling?” One of the hands in Spirit’s hair slides up over his cheek to press into his forehead. Spirit leans into the cool pressure.

“Great. Fabulous. Fantastic.”

“You’re feverish.”

Spirit laughs without opening his eyes. “I blame you.”

Stein makes a choking sound that might be a repressed laugh. “No, you  _actually_  have a fever. You should have said something.”

Spirit shakes his head, opens his eyes to tip his face up to Stein. “I feel  _fine_.”

Stein is looking at him with an odd expression; his mouth is set into a frown, his forehead is creased, but his eyes are soft at the edges and his lips and cheeks have unusually human color to them. “You should really be at home.”

“No, I shouldn’t be,” Spirit retorts. He slides his hands to Stein’s shoulders and pulls, but Stein leans back and he can’t manage to angle the meister any closer.

“I don’t want to take advantage of you.”

“ _I_  want you to,” Spirit says, and Stein’s eyebrows go up and he coughs around a laugh.

“That’s…” Stein looks away, swallows. “No.” He glances back, smiles involuntarily, looks away again. “ _No_. When you’re healthy we’ll take this back up.” He sighs, and when he looks back his face is steady and calm again. “I should take you home.”

“Let me stay here.”

“Spirit…”

“Please. It’s not like you ever sleep anyway.” Stein looks exasperated but he’s not moving away, his hand is still gentle on Spirit’s hair. “And I should really have a doctor nearby in case of complications.”

Stein’s mouth curves into a smile, a real smile that goes all the way to the hesitance in his eyes.

“You are  _ridiculous_.”

“I know.” Spirit is grinning, can’t stop smiling, because that’s agreement in Stein’s voice, and the meister’s hands are cool on his overheated skin, and he can taste smoke and coffee on his tongue and even his rising headache can’t dim the glow of future possibilities.


	2. Stop

Spirit’s fever breaks three days after he arrives at the lab. Stein tries very hard to spend at least some of the time outside the bedroom, doing things  _other_  than hovering over the mostly-asleep weapon. He even succeeds sometimes.

He is there when Spirit wakes up properly, though. The weapon shifts and turns and Stein knows he’s waking up, almost leaves to hide that he has spent the last hour watching Spirit’s eyelids shift through the cool dreams that followed the decrease in his temperature. He doesn’t really have anywhere to go, though, so he stays and waits. When Spirit blinks awake and his eyes focus, the reflexive smile Stein gets is well worth the discomfort of sleeping on the couch the night before instead of in his own bed.

“Hi.” Spirit says, rolling towards him. “Sorry.” His lips are chapped and cracking and his skin is sticky with fever-sweat and his hair is a mess, and he has been sleeping in his dress shirt and hasn’t showered in days. Stein still wants to kiss him, has to clasp his hands together to keep from reaching out and touching Spirit’s face. He has tried to be professional while Spirit was ill, keep tabs on his temperature and the progression of his disease while avoiding the temptation to slide his hands across the weapon’s unconscious skin, rediscover old scars and learn all his new ones. He succeeded but now is beginning to wish he hadn’t.

“Why are you sorry?” Stein asks instead of lunging over the intervening distance between himself and Spirit.

Spirit blinks slowly, waves a hand like it will explain everything on his behalf. “Getting sick. Stealing your bed to recover.” He falls back to the bed, half-smiles up at the ceiling. “Taking advantage of your kind nature.”

“Oh yes.  _That_.” Stein drawls the words and gets a full smile in return, the start of a laugh. “I am  _known_  for my selflessness.”

Spirit pushes himself upright, runs a hand through his hair. Or tries to. His fingers catch on the tangles and he makes a face, tugs against them with a grimace.

“This is  _definitely_  the way to go about seducing you,” he mutters. Stein isn’t sure he was meant to hear so he doesn’t say that it is working. Spirit looks down at his shirt, laughs and doesn’t even try to straighten it. He raises his arms over his head, stretches back until Stein can hear the vertebrae in his spine cracking, comes back forward and twists his neck for good measure.

“I should probably…” he starts to say, turning to swing his legs off the bed. He looks up right as one makes it clear and his face drops into surprise as he sees Stein’s.

_Shit_. Stein hadn’t realized what he was doing, but the expression on Spirit’s face forces his attention onto his own and he can feel the glaze in his eyes, his teeth set against his lip as he absently bites at it, the want all through his blood and skin. He leans back sharply, straightens his mouth and unclenches his hands, lies them gentle and free on his lap, and when he speaks he’s looking at Spirit’s knee instead of his face or his neck or his shoulder.

“Your fever’s broken. You should be fine as long as you give your bruises time to heal.”

Spirit’s other leg comes around to join the first as Stein continues, his bare feet coming down to hit the floor.

“You didn’t break anything fighting the Kishin, although a couple of your ribs are going to be tender for another week or two, and your burn is almost gone now.”

Spirit steps forward, shifts to his knees, and Stein looks down to his hands themselves to avoid meeting the weapon’s eyes.

“You’ll probably still need extra sleep the next few days though.”

“Stein.”

His words cut off. Was he  _babbling_? Is that what it’s like in Spirit’s head  _all the time_? He glances up past the shadow of his hair. Spirit is kneeling in front of him, skin salty with sweat and hair tangled beyond all help and shirt more wrinkles than fabric, and his head is tipped to the side and his forehead is creased in concentration and his mouth is twitching with amusement.

Stein reaches for him one-handed, right hand threading through the knots of red hair and pulling the threat of a smile on Spirit’s lips to press against his own mouth. He remembers how to do this, the details from days ago crystal-clear with revision in the interim: turn your head, line up your mouth with his, part your lips and then his tongue is full of the taste of salt and his skin is burning hot with contact and Spirit is  _laughing_  warm and delighted into his mouth and Stein can feel the vibrations against his tongue like Resonance.

He opens his mouth further, slicks his tongue against Spirit’s chapped lips and Spirit’s laugh turns into a squeak, a sigh, and then there are hands against his head and pushing him back. He reaches for Spirit with his free hand even as he goes, grabs the weapon’s shoulder as his eyes refocus.

“Uh,” he says coherently. Stein can’t remember ever being quite this flustered before in his life; his grasp on language is failing him, meaning slipping from his head until it is  _Spirit_  who finds the words first.

“I. Um. I. Probably need a shower. I can’t  _imagine_  I taste particularly good right now. You...you should…” Spirit pulls him in again, crushes his mouth to Stein’s, and that is directly contradictory to his words but Stein doesn’t argue, just lets Spirit kiss him until the weapon backs away again.

“And I. I should. I...yes. I should go home. Shower. Clean up. Stop...invading your home. And Marie’s home.” His face drops into horror, the hold on Stein’s hair goes panicked instead of needy. “Wait, is Marie  _here_  right now?”

Stein is shaking his head, answers coming straight from reason with no stop-off at emotion. “No. She’s been staying with Azusa.”

Spirit hisses, flinches. “I...fuck. I can’t chase her out of her own home. I should go. Really.”

“Mm,” is the sound Stein makes, but the affirmative of the noise has absolutely nothing to do with his thoughts, and when he pulls at Spirit’s hair again the weapon comes in obediently even as he protests.

“ _Stein_.”He doesn’t make it past the name, the last shift of his lips against Stein’s rather than open air, and their movements echo each other, pulling each other closer by hands wrapped in hair for a moment.

Then Spirit pulls back, pushes Stein away with hands that he actually reclaims this time, and shoves himself to his feet and away so Stein’s own fingers come away empty. The weapon half-turns, looks away, and his hand comes up to press against his mouth. Stein can see his shoulders shift as he gulps air, can see the smile behind his fingers and the rush of blood to his cheeks.

“Okay. I’ll...I’ll be back. Later. Or you can come over.” Spirit lifts his free hand, extends a finger like he’s lecturing. “Yeah. I’ll...shower. And change. And...tomorrow. You. Come over tomorrow. In the afternoon. Two.” He glances at Stein, looks away fast as his blush deepens. “ _Okay_. Yes. Later. I’m leaving. Bye.”

He moves towards the door. “Sorry about...imposing. Contaminating. Uh. Everything.”

And then he’s gone. Stein should see him out but he’s not sure he’ll be able to let him go if he does, so he waits until he is very sure the weapon is actually gone. Then he waits for another several minutes while staring at the indentation in the sheets and his rarely-used pillow and telling himself that what he  _wants_  to do is entirely unreasonable, that he outgrew utterly ridiculous behavior years and years ago. Then he gets up and goes to the other room to remove himself from the temptation.

Still, when he finds Spirit’s forgotten suit jacket, he smiles, and brushes fingers across the fabric, and picks it up to toss over the end of his computer desk where he can see it as he works.


	3. Learning

Spirit  _should_  be ready when the knock comes on his front door. He has been technically ready for an hour; by rights Stein’s arrival should be no surprise. In practice he has been technically ready for an hour, which is far too long and has given him time to panic about what he should be wearing and how casual should he look and what if he has too obviously been waiting. The whole experience is rather like being a teenager again and not in an entirely pleasant way. Nervous adrenaline is much more romantic in retrospect than in the moment, and he is sure he is going to actually be sick from the fluttering in his stomach.

He’s in the bathroom when the knock comes, fiddling with his hair like it has done anything but look perfectly normal all morning, and the sound makes him jump and choke on the air in his lungs. He leans forward on the bathroom counter, looks away from the panic in his face, stares at his hands and tells himself that it’s fine, that this is just Stein and he knows Stein and there is  _nothing_  to worry about.

Then his hands start to shake too and he gives up entirely and just goes to open the fucking door.

It is the meister, of course, leaning backwards with his hands in his pockets and his coat notably absent and if this is his style for dates Spirit is not complaining at  _all_  and he hasn’t thought of this as a date until right now and he can feel the blush coming up over his face hot as a fever. Stein is just  _looking_  at him, chin angled down so his glasses don’t catch the light, but his mouth is curved into what looks suspiciously like a smirk and Spirit realizes he hasn’t said anything.

“Uh. Hi.” He swallows and wishes it helped his nerves more. “Um. Come in.” He steps out of the way and Stein comes forward without saying anything, though his mouth twitches in amusement. Spirit shuts the door, goes down the hallway to the living room and tries not to listen to Stein behind him, tries not to think about how close the meister is, tries not to wonder if he should have kissed him or what he’s going to say or…

“Do you want anything?” he asks over his shoulder. “Coffee or water or…”

He doesn’t actually have a third option beyond alcohol and given that it’s barely the afternoon that seems a bit excessive. Stein only lets the pause hang for a moment before he answers.

“No, I’m fine.”

_I’m not_. Spirit leads the way into the living room, has a moment of panic about seating -- the chair? the couch? the floor? -- before he settles on the edge of the couch. And then Stein takes the chair anyway. Frustrating.

Spirit can’t figure out what to do with his hands and can’t focus his eyes on anything.  _Not_  looking at Stein feels forced and awkward but every time he does glance in the meister’s direction those green eyes are watching him evenly, like Stein is drinking in every detail of his face and clothes and hair, and he should have put on a tie or tucked in his shirt, at least then he’d have something to  _fiddle_  with. Instead he runs his hand through his hair, rests his fingers against the back of his neck. He can feel his pulse racing under his thumb, can hear his breath too fast and too loud in the space, and he’s not looking at Stein’s face but now he’s staring at the meister’s  _arms_  instead, unusually exposed by his lack of coat, and watching the shift of muscle under skin as Stein settles into the chair. The meister shifts his knees and it is a fully  _ordinary_  action but now Spirit is looking at his  _pants_  and that is  _much_  worse.

When he looks back up to the meister’s face Stein is actively smiling. As he makes eye contact the meister’s eyebrows raise, just a flicker up, and Spirit flushes dark again.

“It’s good to see you,” he says inanely and cringes from the pointlessness of the words. “Uh. Sorry. Again. For making you nurse me back to health.”

“Don’t be.”

Stein sounds calm, and the words should be a relief but they are really not at all, all Spirit can see is the conversational topic evaporating and he truly has nothing else to offer to the gods of awkward first dates. If that’s what this is.

He opens his mouth, hoping some sort of idea will insert itself into the space, but there is nothing even when he waits, and Stein is really close to laughing, Spirit can see the amusement bright in his eyes and tight against his lips and then the meister speaks, and Spirit is so relieved he doesn’t even care that the words sound very close to a chuckle.

“Are you  _nervous_ , Spirit?”

“Yes,” he admits without intending to do so. It’s absurd to deny it, anyway, when his hand is still awkwardly crooked against his shoulder and his blush is still hot and red in his face and he can think of nothing at all to say.

“Why?” Stein sounds legitimately confused, and briefly exasperation wins out over panic and Spirit rolls his eyes.

“Uh, because I have no idea what to say or do with you? I mean I’m  _pretty_  sure by now you’re not teasing me and that’s great, but you’re in my  _house_  and we’re  _alone_  and I am a  _grown man_  and this shouldn’t be a problem but I haven’t been  _sober_  for this part of a relationship since...since Kami, honestly, and I don’t know how to handle this with a  _guy_  and you’re even less standard than normal because I  _know_  you, I’ve known you all my life and I don’t know what to  _do_  or  _say_  like are we friends or weapon partners or boyfriends at this point oh my god ‘boyfriends,’ that sounds totally  _stupid_ , you are never going to be able to put up with me I don’t know why I thought this was a good idea but I don’t want to let you down when you’ve been  _waiting_  all this time for  _me_  but I’m not  _worth_  it, really I’m not, I’m just an idiot and  _fuck_  I didn’t really mean to say all of that, god what is  _wrong_  with me this was an  _awful_  idea, I can’t--”

“Spirit.” Stein leans forward and it is the motion as much as the word that cuts off Spirit’s speeding voice. “Shut up.”

Spirit shuts his mouth. With the flow of his words stopped his eyes start to burn with the promise of tears. He really  _is_  an idiot, what happened to being an  _adult_?

Stein stands and for a horrible moment Spirit is sure he is going to leave, just walk out of his apartment and never come back. The expectation is so certain that he can’t process the movement when Stein steps over the coffee table, carefully placing his feet so he doesn’t knock anything over, and sits on the couch next to him, so close that their knees brush as the meister moves. Spirit’s mind is still blank with lack of comprehension when Stein reaches a hand up to his hair, when Stein’s fingers curl into the strands, when Stein leans in towards him.

It catches up all at once as lips meet his, Stein’s shoulder angled against his and skin warm against his neck and cheek. Spirit’s hand is tangled between them but Stein reaches for him with his free hand as the weapons wiggles his free, hooks it around the meister’s shoulders and lifts his other to steady Stein’s head. Stein’s hands are gentle against his hair but his mouth is harder, pushing Spirit back against the arm of the couch, and the weapon doesn’t know which of them parts his mouth first but then Stein’s tongue is past his lips, trailing sensation across the roof of his mouth and slipping against his own, and his nerves are gone with all his self-consciousness. He makes a sound back in his throat and Stein starts to pull back before Spirit catches him, holds him still.

“No, it’s  _good_ , keep doing that,” he says against Stein’s lips, and he doesn’t think the words are really intelligible but Stein understands the basic premise at least, because he comes back harder, his hands holding Spirit’s head steady while he explores the weapon’s mouth with his tongue.

When Stein eventually pulls away and Spirit is in a state to notice anything beyond his mouth, they have slid sideways and down on the couch so Stein is mostly on top of Spirit and they are both a lot closer to horizontal than they started. Stein shifts, starts to take his weight, but Spirit clenches his hand into a fist in the meister’s hair and hisses “ _Stay_  where you are,” and for a wonder Stein does exactly as told.

Of course that keeps their faces very close, close enough that Spirit can feel Stein’s breathing stuttering into uneven patterns against his mouth and can see the thin ring of green around his dilated pupils, but this isn’t a  _problem_  per se, at least not in the standard sense.

“Aren’t I hurting you?” Stein asks. His voice is higher than usual, the words fragmenting around choppy breaths, and Spirit whines in response before he can manage intelligibility.

“No.” He slides his fingers out of Stein’s hair, down the back of his shirt collar, and Stein’s eyelids flutter and he sucks in an inhale. “No, you’re not.”

“I…” Stein opens his eyes, focuses on Spirit’s shoulder instead of his face. One of his hands slides down the weapon’s side to his hip. “Why...you thought I was  _teasing_  you?” He sounds legitimately confused, maybe a little hurt but primarily puzzled.

“Well, yeah.” It  _does_  seem a little silly, with the whole length of Stein’s body flush with Spirit’s and the weapon’s hands against the meister’s skin and their lips flushed with kissing. “I mean, you’re you and I’m me and it just doesn’t make  _sense_ , that you would have been waiting for me all this time.”

Stein’s forehead creases in confusion, he shakes his head more in resignation than negation. “You really are an idiot, you know that?” His hand on Spirit’s hip comes back up, catching the loose edge of shirt and dipping under it to pull over skin.

Spirit gasps, laughs high and breathy. “Yeah. I know.”

Stein looks back up at his eyes, smiles wide before his gaze drops down to Spirit’s mouth, but the smile lingers at the edge of his parted lips. His hand comes sideways between them, tracing the razor scars of years past so lightly that the newer bruising under them doesn’t even twinge.

Spirit sees him swallow before he speaks, still watching Spirit’s mouth. “You said they had disappeared.”

“Y-yeah.” Spirit grins sheepishly. “I lied.”

Stein laughs. It is very strange to see emotion come so fast to Stein’s face, all loose and relaxed and unguarded. It also flushes Spirit’s skin hot with pleasure but that is not a problem, not when Stein bites his lip like that in response to Spirit’s hissed exhale.

Spirit looks up, glides his eyes over grey hair and pale skin, gaze catching on the darker metal against the pale color. “You put a  _screw_  through your head.”

“Yeah.” Stein’s eyes are actually shut now, his face relaxed as his fingers trace over the delicate bruised skin of Spirit’s stomach, up his ribcage.

Spirit thinks about protesting this further but it hardly seems worth it. “Okay.”

Stein comes back in to cover Spirit’s mouth with his, slides his hand up farther so Spirit’s shirt pulls high and cold air blows over his stomach, brushes fingertips over Spirit’s nipple too lightly to do anything other than elicit a shocked inhale.

“You’re a fast learner,” Spirit offers against skin and feels Stein smile.

“Always have been.”

Spirit’s hands are still in Stein’s hair, that hardly seems fair, so he extricates his right hand and brings it down to the edge of Stein’s shirt.  _That_  doesn’t appear to be sewn down, at least, and Stein angles his hips to give Spirit better access to the bottom edge. Spirit’s fingers find skin and scarred stitches, and then he goes down instead of up, under the waistband of Stein’s pants instead of the against the texture of his shirt, and Stein loses his balance and topples sideways into the back of the couch with a surprised hiss.

“Bet this is new material,” Spirit offers, coming up on his elbow so he’s pinning Stein between the couch and his body. There’s not a lot of space for them both but that just means they are pressed together so close Stein’s erratic breaths are hot on Spirit’s neck, and Spirit doesn’t see any real issue with that. The hand under his shirt has gone to his back, clutching at his shoulder like Stein’s afraid of falling while the other strokes through his hair with absentminded affection.

Spirit edges his hand sideways from Stein’s hip to the front of his jeans, and he has a moment of panic that maybe Stein isn’t enjoying this as much as he is, that maybe he has overstepped or misjudged the situation, but then his fingers brush hot skin and Stein  _gasps_  for air like he’s been hit and that lets Spirit know he’s right before his brain even catches up. The angle is odd, backwards and awkward from the restriction of the pants, but even brushing his fingers against Stein’s erection gets a truly  _wonderful_  choking groan from the meister, and Spirit is grinning wide and uncontrolled and couldn’t stop if his life depended on it. Stein’s fingers are tight on his skin and in his hair and the meister presses his forehead into Spirit’s shoulder, and when he speaks the words are muffled by fabric and interrupted by gasps.

“Spi--Spirit I--you--I’m not…” That’s a  _whimper_ , there, and Stein bucks his hips up against the minimal contact of Spirit’s fingers. “Too fast, I won’t--,” he manages, and Spirit grates his wrist raw on the waistband to actually wrap his fingers fully around Stein’s cock and the meister gasps and his fingers spasm against hair and skin and he comes, just like that, his body trembling against Spirit’s everywhere they touch.

Spirit waits to slides his hand free until Stein stops shuddering, until the meister’s breathing stabilizes slightly. Then he lets his grip go, slides his hand back up and free and tips his head down so he can see Stein’s face.

“First for that too?”

Stein’s eyes are shut, his forehead pressed hard against Spirit’s shoulder, glasses askew and panting for breath like he’s been running hard for hours. He nods without opening his eyes, and his hold on Spirit’s hair loosens into something more of a caress than a cling. Then he takes a deep breath, looks up at Spirit’s face, and the  _smile_  he gives the weapon is breathtaking and soft and warm and utterly, terrifyingly devious.

That’s all the warning Spirit gets before Stein is over him, returning to his original position on Spirit’s lap. His hands are gone but his mouth is back so Spirit doesn’t complain about the loss, just gives up on any hope of tidiness and drags his sticky hands across shoulder, neck, hair without caring what a mess he is making.

It speaks to the distraction of Stein’s mouth, how enthralling the carefully deliberate movements of his lips are, that Spirit doesn’t realize what the meister’s hands are doing with his pants until fingers slide across his own erection. He gasps for air, startled by the rush of sensation, and Stein laughs lower than Spirit has ever heard him before.

“Fast learner,” he murmurs against Spirit’s mouth before bringing his head down to press his lips against the dip of the weapon’s throat. Spirit briefly notes that he should wear a looser shirt next time, or at least leave the top buttons undone, and then Stein’s long fingers wrap entirely around his cock and every coherent thought explodes away and he is nothing but sensation and heat and pleasure rippling out into the farthest reaches of his veins.

He is saying something, words pouring over his tongue, and it’s mostly Stein’s name over and over but there’s other things in there too, “good” and “more” and a lot of unintelligible moaning, and Stein is laughing, more delight than amusement in the sound, and Spirit smiles and opens his eyes to watch Stein’s face. The meister’s mouth is soft in a smile, eyes sliding over Spirit’s hair eyes mouth skin as his hand pulls smooth over the weapon’s cock, and god Spirit has  _thought_  about Stein’s hands before, come to them a couple of times, but this is better than he imagined, better than he ever managed himself, all the strength and dexterity he has noticed distantly in weapon form finally put to the use that they were apparently intended for all along.

It takes longer for Spirit, lacking the instant-finish of virginity that Stein had, but Stein looks so  _pleased_  with the process that any sense of imbalance totally fails to materialize, and the meister keeps shifting the pressure of his fingers and the angle of his wrist, and Spirit can feel the rush of orgasm coming in advance, can catch Stein’s shoulders and groan “ _Stein_ ,” so Stein is watching his eyes when the world whites out in pleasure.

When his vision comes back Stein is still smiling, all soft with no laughter anywhere, and Spirit smiles back and pulls him down so they are lengthwise on the couch again.

“Your shirt,” Stein starts, trying to keep his sticky hand clear of the fabric, and Spirit snorts.

“Has had worse. Or the same, at least. Don’t worry about it.”

Stein relaxes, goes languid-soft under Spirit’s hands, and Spirit shuts his eyes and lets the smell of cinnamon and smoke wash over him.


	4. Plans

Stein can feel Spirit coming minutes before the weapon actually reaches the door of the classroom. He’s not sure if they are Resonating more strongly now or if it is just that he is constantly paying attention to it, more than before, but in any case he has plenty of warning before the weapon comes into the empty classroom.

“There will be students in here in five minutes,” Stein says around his cigarette without looking up as the door opens. He is looking at the papers in front of him. Sometimes he even makes marks on them. He’ll have to go back later because he has no idea what he is writing, is barely seeing what’s in front of him for how much attention he is paying to his other senses. He can hear Spirit breathe and can hear the sound of his shoes on the tile floor; if he focuses he imagines he can feel the increase in temperature with the addition of another body to the empty room.

He can also hear the pause in Spirit’s movements and breathing, the hiccup of surprise in his inhale before he comes forward so slowly it must be deliberate.

“What makes you think that matters?” he asks. The question is petulant. Stein smiles without moving his head so his hair covers his reaction. “Maybe I had important Death Weapon business for you.”

“Really.” Stein sets his pencil down, leans back in his chair, and kicks himself around so he turns to face Spirit. He sucks in a breath of smoke, exhales a silver cloud into the air between them. He keeps his voice level, entirely blank of all amusement or teasing. “I’m sure you did. You’ve been focused on your official duties all morning.”

Spirit folds his arms. His shirt is clean and smooth, his tie straight, the crease in his pants iron-crisp. He looks utterly professional. “Who says I haven’t been?”

“My apologies,” Stein says without sympathy. “I just thought you might have been somewhat distracted.”

Spirit raises an eyebrow. “That’s rather arrogant of you --” he starts before Stein continues.

“Since  _I’ve_  spent all morning thinking about taking your clothes off with my teeth.”

Spirit’s arms don’t move at all, but his words drop to silence instantly, his mouth comes open, and his eyes flicker out of focus for a moment. Stein can  _see_  the thoughts in his head as clearly as if they were Resonating, grins sharp at Spirit’s expression. The weapon’s eyes come back into focus, slide down Stein’s shirt until Stein imagines he can feel the gaze like a caress, and then Spirit makes a funny whimper in the back of his throat and looks away.

“Uh.” That is higher than normal, squeaking high in his mouth until Spirit coughs and blinks and steadies his voice. “I just. Wanted to see you.”

“It’s been half a  _day_ , Spirit.”

Spirit laughs while still staring fixedly out the window rather than at Stein. “Yeah. I know. I didn’t say it wasn’t entirely absurd.”

“I didn’t say it was.”

“Yeah, but I could  _hear_  you thinking it.” He looks back and his smile is all in his blue eyes and Stein can feel his composure melting away. Spirit grins, drops his arms from their protective angle over his chest and comes forward, crossing the classroom until he can lean against the edge of Stein’s desk and the meister has to tip his head up to watch his face. The weapon rests his weight on the corner of the table and the angle of his back and shoulders is so graceful that Stein wonders briefly if he has  _practiced_  draping himself artistically on his surroundings or if it just a natural effect of being a weapon, the ability to fit himself to the space he is in like he fits into his pristine clothes.

When he looks away from Spirit’s shoulders and wrists and hips to his face, the weapon is watching him, smiling in a way that Stein thinks he is unaware of. The meister can’t decide if he wants more to kiss him or to just watch Spirit looking at him that way, like he’s something precious and shining bright with novelty.

“Um,” Spirit finally says, looking away and down at Stein’s hand against the forgotten papers, which is good because Stein can’t be bothered to handle language while Spirit is staring at him. “So. Is three days in a row too aggressive?”

“We used to  _live_  together, Spirit, I don’t think seeing each other every day is particularly extreme.”

Spirit smiles from behind the fall of his hair, reaches out to touch the tips of Stein’s fingers with his own. “It’s different now.”

“Not for me.”

“Yeah.” Spirit’s fingers trace over the bones in the back of Stein’s hand, outlining knuckles and veins and the faint patterns of childhood scars. Stein breathes in slow and deep and tries not to tremble. “Guess not.”

There’s a pause, Spirit lost in his absent movements and Stein focused on staying very still, and then the weapon shakes his head and looks back up. His fingers still but stay against Stein’s skin. “So. Uh. What are you doing tonight?”

_You_. The quip rises so fast to Stein’s lips that he has to bite it back, swallow before he answers. “What do you  _want_  me to be doing tonight?”

Spirit flushes so hard that Stein suspects they may be thinking along the same lines, but what he says is, “Come over. I’ll make you dinner.” He reaches his free hand, the one not soaking warmth into Stein’s skin, and pulls it through his hair, fidgeting with nerves.

“I didn’t know you could cook.” It’s not a judgment, just mild surprise at this unknown aspect, but Spirit’s fading color rushes back, and he answers with the quick snap of defensiveness.

“I can. It should be edible, at least. Definitely better than whatever you’d be having. If you remember to eat at all.”

Stein shrugs one shoulder. “That is true.” His hand feels like Spirit’s fingers are on fire, branding their pattern into his skin. “Sure. I’ll be there when I’m done grading tests.”

“Seven?” Spirit offers.

Stein nods, takes the cigarette from his lips and balances it against his free fingers. Spirit’s answering grin is lopsided, shaky with what Stein is beginning to recognize as nervousness, and his fingers tap idly against Stein’s knuckles, stuttering an irregular heartbeat of adrenaline.

“Good. Okay. Yeah. I should. Let you get back to work,” Spirit says with absolutely no move to leave. Stein is smiling. He is sure he has smiled more in the last week than in the last several years put together but he can’t stop and can’t think of a reason why he should try.

“You should.” The words lack any feeling, just a statement of fact. Stein is watching Spirit’s eyes, and he sees them flicker down his face, from his glasses to his nose to his mouth. He sees the shift of Spirit’s lips, an involuntary tell for the weapon’s intentions, and Spirit’s shoulders tip just slightly forward towards him.

The sound of the door opening comes with Maka’s cheerful voice. “Good morning Professor Stein!”

Spirit jumps like he’s been shocked, jerks to his feet and around so suddenly that it is infinitely more suspicious than if he had stayed still. “Maka!” His voice is high with adrenaline and surprise and Stein has to bring his hand up over his mouth to cover his laughter. There is almost nothing Spirit could do that would be  _more_  obvious.

Maka’s face drops into a scowl at finding Spirit here, apparently oblivious to any other possibilities of the situation. “Papa.” She continues to make the word an epithet; an impressive feat, given the subject matter. “What are  _you_  doing here?”

Spirit’s back is to Stein but he can hear the hiss of breath as Spirit tries to find a response, and sympathy wins out over amusement at the weapon’s expense.

“Maka.” Stein’s voice is entirely level, cleared of any remnant of either amusement or adrenaline. “Are you sure you’re ready to be back in class? Kid won’t be returning for the rest of the week while he recovers.”

“I’m ready,” she affirms, and her attention is gone to the new topic of defending her right to be back in the classroom.

Stein glances at Spirit. “I’ll see you later, Spirit.” The words are entirely, deliberately free from any audible overtones, but Spirit’s face goes so red that it is a good thing Maka isn’t looking at him or she would put everything together instant;y .

“Yeah. Uh. Yeah. See you,” he manages before retreating from the room. Stein grins as the door swings shut and curls the fingers of his still-tingling hand against the desk.


	5. Wall

By the time they have finished dinner, Spirit is mostly able to breathe again. His nerves picked up in advance of Stein’s arrival, so he spent the last few hours of the cooking process more or less hyperventilating at the spaghetti sauce he was making. By rights this should have continued through the meal itself, particularly given that Stein arrived in the white shirt from the anniversary party instead of his standard grey. But as soon as Spirit opened the door Stein had eyed him, said “You’re nervous again,” and actually  _shoved_  him back against the hallway wall before kissing him hard enough that Spirit forgot about everything on the stove. Which had been  _another_  narrowly-averted catastrophe, but eventually they made it to dinner and through dinner and Stein offsets the way his continuing stare makes Spirit’s heart race by filling the silence with stories about the students in his class.

“Jacqueline is devoted to her meister,” he is saying as Spirit finishes, several minutes after Stein. “Kim’s smart but she turns it towards less-than-productive ends.”

“Totally unlike you,” Spirit offers around a mouthful of pasta.

“Entirely.” Stein smirks.

Spirit swallows his last bite, considers the array of dishes over the table. “Uh. I’ll clean these up later.”

“This is why I don’t cook,” Stein offers.

Spirit rolls his eyes. “Yes, but not eating at all isn’t a viable solution for most of us. This is why you need me here, to keep you fed.”

“It  _was_  delicious,” Stein admits. “Maybe I should keep you around more often.”

“I’m not complaining.”

Stein smiles, like Spirit is saying a lot more than he means to be, and stands from the table. Spirit moves to follow, shaky nerves creeping back to tremble through his joints, and when he speaks his voice is infected too. “Uh. Living room?”

“We could make out on the couch like teenagers,” Stein says. Spirit can’t see his face, the meister is turned away, but his tone is flat in the way that the weapon has learned means he is being teased.

Spirit huffs a frustrated sigh and tries to ignore the way all the blood in his body tries to rush to his cock at the idea. “Well if you’re  _opposed_...” He is trying for casual and teasing, but not at all sure he succeeds from the way his voice tries to crack in the middle of the sentence.

Stein turns so fast Spirit almost runs into him, and when he looks up Stein is smirking and Spirit gets the sinking feeling that he has walked into whatever Stein had planned.

“I didn’t say  _that_ ,” Stein purrs, and then he shoves Spirit backwards and the weapon is falling, stumbling back to catch his balance until he runs into the wall, and then Stein is in front of him and pinning him in place where he stands.

With the wall behind him and Stein’s hands pressing his shoulders back there is nowhere for Spirit to go, but he doesn’t complain; the darkness outside is heightening his expectations, expanding his imagination into the realm of half-forgotten fantasies, and while Stein’s fingers find the buttons of his shirt his own seek out the bottom of the meister’s.

“I like this shirt,” he offers, fabric sliding slick against his hands. “It’s a nice change.”

“Ah,” Stein says against his ear. The meister’s voice attempts its usual level tone but the effect is somewhat offset by the sound of his breathing coming fast between words. “I’m glad you approve.”

“Yeah,” Spirit manages intelligibly, and the last of his buttons come undone and Stein’s hands are pressing hot against his skin and Spirit hisses in pleasure, the cold air prickling goosebumps as the meister’s fingers trail flushed warmth. The angle isn’t quite right for his own hands, he can’t maneuver effectively around Stein’s exploratory touch, but the loose edge of the shirt comes up enough for him to run his hands around Stein’s waist, up the dip of his back, and Stein huffs an almost-laugh against his hair and Spirit can feel him smile.

It’s for the best that they’re not kissing, for the moment, because Spirit can’t keep his thoughts in order when Stein’s mouth is on his and right now he just wants to absorb the feel of hands against his skin. Physical contact is  _always_  soothing, external sensation rippling through his head in waves of pleasure, but to know that it’s  _Stein_ , who  _never_  touches him or anyone, just makes everything better, years of unidentified  _want_  finally satisfied by cool hands on superheated skin. Then Stein leans back, pulls his weight away from Spirit’s shoulder, and there is a flash of panic as Spirit thinks he has done something wrong. Stein’s eyes drop to his hands, one currently splayed over Spirit’s chest, but Spirit doesn’t know what he is reacting to until he speaks.

“I didn’t know it left a scar,” the meister says, and Spirit looks down to the starburst mark from the Soul Force years ago, the way Stein’s hand fits into the imprint perfectly.

“Yeah.” There used to be a rush of emotion associated with the mark, guilt and anger and frustration all bundled together, but it has been there for so long that Spirit hasn’t really  _seen_  it in years, and now that Stein is pointing it out there’s nothing there but familiarity and a trickle of something that might be pleasure if Spirit was willing to put that name to it. He shrugs, attempting nonchalance. “It used to be a lot darker.”

Stein glances up at him over the top of his glasses without turning his head all the way up, and Spirit keeps talking without meaning to, arousal turning to nerves and spilling information straight from his memories to his mouth without checking with intention on the way. “Kami hated it. She said you had marked me, like I was  _yours_.”

Stein looks back at his hand on Spirit’s skin, brings his other to trace the lighter, straighter scars around it. “That  _was_  the goal.”

“Why did you?” Spirit asks. He didn’t  _plan_  to have this conversation now, hadn’t been sure they would  _ever_  have this conversation, but apparently that’s where this is going and he’s asking now. “Experiment on me, I mean. Why didn’t you  _tell_  me?”

Stein shakes his head, negation rather than refusal to speak. “It wasn’t experimentation. I never did anything but break the skin.” His fingers sweep over Spirit’s stomach, tracing out the scars, and Spirit shivers without meaning to. “I  _was_  marking you. After Kami. You were  _mine_  and I needed to make that physical.” The hand against his stomach goes to the weapon’s hip, fingers press to dig into the skin. Stein’s next words are rougher, humming with emotion. Spirit can feel the vibration in his blood. “I  _needed_  you and you were leaving.”

“I wasn’t,” Spirit starts, but Stein shakes his head so sharply that he goes silent without finishing his words.

“You  _were_. I couldn’t share you with Kami.” He laughs and there is very little humor in the sound. “I still couldn’t, if I had to, and I’ve had years without you now.”

The words shouldn’t crackle like electricity through Spirit, like a kinder variant of the Soul Force from their childhood. He knows about healthy relationships and knows that people shouldn’t depend on each other like this. But he also knows about partnerships, the way a weapon and a meister  _have_  to rely on each other, and the idea of being indispensable, being utterly crucial to someone the way Stein is saying he is, is absurd and ridiculous and intoxicating, and he is leaning in, away from the wall, towards Stein’s touch and close, so he can slide his hands up the meister’s back to his shoulders and breathe warm against the meister’s collarbone.

Stein lets his hands slip to Spirit’s back in something that would be very much like an embrace if it were anyone else. Spirit smiles against the white of Stein’s shirt.

He wants to say a lot of things.  _That’s fucked up_ , would be reasonable.  _That’s really romantic_ , is what his insane brain says. When he opens his mouth, what he ends up vocalizing is, “Don’t ever cut me without my permission again.”

Stein makes a choking sound against Spirit’s hair, and then sucks in a breath and manages, “Understood,” before his hands are back on Spirit’s chest, pushing him back into the wall where he was before and shoving his open shirt off his shoulders. Spirit gets his hands free and up into Stein’s hair, tangling in the soft grey as Stein’s mouth comes back to his, warm lips and slick tongue against his mouth, his lips, his teeth, his tongue. There are fingers at his pants, hooking over the top edge of his waistband to hold him still, and Stein’s knees are interlaced with his so their hips press together with friction that is electrifying and nothing like enough at once.

“Fuck,” Spirit says into Stein’s mouth, “Hang on.” He frees his hands, reaches down to unfasten the button and zipper on his pants; Stein shifts a hand to the wall to brace himself, breathing hard against Spirit’s cheek while the weapon fumbles with familiar clothing turned complicated by haste. It’s only a matter of seconds before he gets the pants open, although it feels like an eternity, and then Stein’s hands are back on him and sliding the fabric free, slacks and boxers at once, and Spirit feels faintly like he should be self-conscious but his rational brain is gone, all his body is saying more more more, and when he rocks his hips forward to press his erection against Stein’s fingers everything in his head goes quiet.

Spirit moans open-mouthed, fingers clutching at whatever they can reach, and Stein makes a strangled sound in his throat like he can’t remember how to breathe. Spirit blinks vision back and Stein is staring at him, as wide-eyed as if he’s never seen the weapon before, and Spirit has to laugh.

“This isn’t fair,” he manages, high and breathy. “If you keep going I’m going to come on you before you even have any of your clothes off.”

This time he’s  _expecting_  the reaction, the jerk of Stein’s eyebrows and the flicker of his eyelashes and the whine in his throat, and he laughs and reaches for the meister’s glasses. Stein doesn’t protest, lets him carefully remove them although he does raise an eyebrow when Spirit tosses them haphazardly to join the green shirt on the floor. The shirt is harder, partially because Stein starts sliding his fingers over Spirit’s cock and that is  _really_  distracting and also because Spirit has to get Stein to let  _go_  long enough to tug the shirt up over his head. But then it’s gone, there’s just Stein’s own pants between them, and the payoff of stitched skin against Spirit’s is well worth the brief separation. Stein’s free hand comes back to Spirit’s hip, holds him steady against the wall while his fingers pull over the weapon’s cock, and Spirit doesn’t know  _what_  sounds are coming out of his mouth but Stein seems to like them, from the way his breath hitches into a gasp every time he hears one.

Stein is a  _very_  fast learner, Spirit has to admit, although he expects the meister has some personal experience with this particular skill. He starts out slow, slower than Spirit really wants, but within seconds he has sped up until the weapon’s not sure if Stein is reading his mind or just very good at reading  _him_  and the involuntary shifts of his hips and sounds in his throat. The meister’s thumb rolls over the head of Spirit’s cock and Spirit chokes on a breath, and then his attention to detail starts to slip and there’s just friction and fingers and  _god_  why didn’t they do this  _sooner_?

The last thought comes just as his orgasm does, so Spirit jerks against the wall and against Stein and his groan of satisfaction turns into a laugh. Stein doesn’t let go but Spirit can hear him huff against his ear, can hear the smile in his voice when he purrs “Something funny?”

“Yeah,” Spirit manages, sucking in air as his vision clears and the last waves of pleasure ebb. Stein feels him relax and lets his grip go. “I was thinking we should have done this a long time ago.”

Stein raises an eyebrow, shrugs one-shouldered. “No argument here.” He is smiling with more than a tinge of self-satisfaction, and then he lifts his hand to his mouth and runs his tongue across his fingers.

Spirit’s eyes track the motion and he whimpers because never in his whole life did he imagine that Stein licking his come off his fingers would be so incredibly hot. If he wasn’t seconds out from his last orgasm he is certain he would be rock-hard again; as it is, there’s really only one reasonable option.

Spirit moves fast, while Stein is distracted, catching his knee between the meisters’ and twisting to reverse their positions. He nearly falls, taking Stein down with him, because he has forgotten that his feet are still trapped in the folds of his pants, but they both fall into the wall instead of to the floor and then he remembers to step free.

Stein is grinning at him and if Spirit gives him a chance he  _knows_  the meister will have  _something_  teasing to say so he doesn’t. The carpet is rough under his knees when he drops and he knows he will regret the rugburn in the morning, but right now he can’t be bothered to care much about anything but the present.

“What are you--” Stein starts.

“Shut up,” Spirit offers as he gets the zipper of Stein’s pants down. Stein pauses, either to collect a response or to actually listen, and that’s enough time for Spirit to get the edge of the meister’s boxers down and wrap his mouth around Stein’s cock.

Stein groans and his weight drops back to hit the wall so hard Spirit thinks he might have bruises from the impact later. Spirit’s hair is in his face so he can’t see Stein’s expression, and he has to open his mouth wide to keep his teeth clear and this is all a lot more complicated than it looked from the other side, but Stein tastes salty and bitter and he is  _filling_  Spirit’s mouth and this is  _interesting_ , and when Spirit shifts his tongue Stein whines and gasps so he does it again.

Stein says something, a few words but the only one Spirit really understands is his name. He understands the tone, though, pulls his lips tight and sucks experimentally, and Stein gasps for air and Spirit is beginning to see how he must have sounded a minute ago. He pulls free for a moment, wraps his fingers around the base of Stein’s cock, and the meister’s hands come down to lace into his hair so when Spirit brings his mouth back he can feel them tighten into fists in reaction.

It’s easier with his hand as well, although coordinating the two motions of his head and his wrist takes a minute, and  _then_  Spirit figures out how to lead with his lips to cover his teeth and that gets him another sound, a hard inhale that Spirit can feel all though Stein’s fingers in his hair, and then he tries sliding his tongue again and Stein arches forward, breaks Spirit’s name into pieces in his throat, and the weapon’s mouth is full of heat and bitter and salt. He swallows fast, before he has time to think about it, and the aftertaste is like a tangible presence against his throat, not entirely unpleasant.

Stein slides down the wall as soon as Spirit is clear, like his weight is too much to bear, and his eyes won’t quite focus on Spirit’s face. They land on his hair instead, on Stein’s fingers still knotted in it, and the meister smiles absently and works his hand free. He swallows, open his mouth to speak, and then he looks at Spirit and laughs instead and has to try again.

“Thanks.”

_You’re welcome_ , is what Spirit means to say.

“Stay,” is what he does say.

Stein’s eyebrows come up again. With his glasses off he looks strangely young, like the frames took the years apart with them when they came off. “What?”

“Stay. The night. Just...you can go back to the lab in the morning, before work, but stay here. With me.”

Stein blinks. He reaches for the screw in his hair, but lets his hand fall before he actually touches the metal, and then he smiles, the faintest curve of lips.

“Okay.”


	6. Observation

Spirit refuses Stein’s offer of help with clean up, shoves him out onto the balcony with the order to stop distracting him. Stein doesn’t know what he was doing that was causing Spirit such problems but he can still watch the weapon from out here, and that’s enough for him. The interior lighting washes the windows out to translucence and keeps Stein hidden in shadow, so he can smoke while watching Spirit’s hair fall over his face and the move of the weapon’s wrists without anyone to see.

He is just finishing his cigarette when Spirit comes out to find him, his shirtsleeves rolled up and speckled with water from the sink.

“Hi.” Spirit is grinning like he didn’t see Stein less than a half hour ago, like he can’t  _stop_  smiling. He comes over to lean against the balcony next to the meister, doesn’t quite reach for Stein’s hand, but lines up their elbows and leans in so their arms lie together in a line. Stein looks down at the white alongside the green, smiles, looks back out and away to the street below.

“Do you remember when you came up after Maka’s test?” Spirit asks, voice low with nostalgia.

Stein smiles into the darkness. “Yeah. Do you? You were pretty far gone that night.”

“Eh.” Spirit shrugs. “I remember the important parts.”

“Of course you do.” Stein crushes the end of his cigarette against the metal railing, twist the stub between his fingers until it disintegrates into powder in the air.

Spirit swallows audibly before he speaks. The action undermines the forced casualness of his words. “So were you...then, too?”

Stein laughs without looking at the weapon. “I told you. Since we were kids.”

“But...but I didn’t even  _see_  you for fifteen years!”

“Fourteen,” Stein corrects. “And that’s not true. We both helped take down the Demon Sword.”

Spirit’s laugh is shocked rather than amused. “But  _why_? Why would you  _wait_  for so long?”

Stein sighs. He looks away from the sky, down at his now-empty hands. He wishes he had another cigarette, just for something to twist between his fingers.

“I wasn’t  _waiting_. Just not changing my mind.”

A pause of silence. Stein can hear Spirit suck in air, the beat while the weapon thinks about speaking, another breath before he actually does, voice very low. “When? Did you start, I mean?”

Stein shakes his head. “I don’t know. I  _realized_  with Kami but it was probably sooner than that.”

“Huh.” Spirit swallows again. “Sorry.”

“I don’t know why you are,” Stein offers. “You didn’t know, for most of it. I didn’t  _want_  you to know.”

“Still.”

“Yeah.” Stein turns away from the street, faces back towards the light spilling out from the window. “You would be.” He steps forward to go back inside and Spirit follows in his wake.

Stein stops just inside the living room, glances at Spirit. “You sure you want me to stay?”

Spirit blushes all over his face -- that must be exhausting, to react so fast so frequently -- but his voice is steady when he answers. “Very sure.”

“I’m going to keep you awake,” Stein says. He means it sincerely -- he hasn’t slept more than a few hours at once in years and years -- but when Spirit makes a strangled sound and his eyes go wide he realizes the secondary interpretation. “Insomnia,” he clarifies, adding “Pervert,” just for good measure.

“Shut up or you’re on the couch,” Spirit shoots back, striding down the hallway. Stein grins at the weapon’s back and follows.

Spirit’s bedroom looks shockingly like it did when they were students together, from what Stein remembers of the few times he had reason to see it. The indentation in the mattress is the same, all the blankets piled on one side haphazardly. Spirit sighs at the mess but doesn’t move to tidy it.

“Sorry,” he offers needlessly. “I wasn’t really expecting you to see this tonight.” He grabs a shirt off the floor, tosses it towards a laundry basket.

The room is messier than Stein’s, but it’s warmer too; it looks like Spirit sleeps here, lives here, permeates the room entire. Stein’s own bedroom is cold all the time, even first thing in the morning, and there’s nothing of the meister there at all. This room has clothes heaped in a pile and tangled covers where Spirit slept and signs of life  _everywhere_ , from the faint scratches of old accidents along the bedframe to the fingerprints in dust over the top of the alarm clock.

Stein is smiling, doesn’t realize he is until Spirit turns to look at him and echoes the expression even as he smoothes his hair in what Stein is beginning to think is a nervous habit.

“You don’t mind? I mean it’s a little fast, I guess, and you  _were_  just coming over for dinner. If you want to leave I understand, I won’t be hurt.”

Stein shakes his head. “No. I don’t want to leave.”

Spirit smiles with his hand against the back of his neck. They stand there smiling at each other for a minute before the weapon looks away and clears his throat.

“Okay. I’m gonna…” he waves a hand towards the bathroom. “Stuff. I’ll be back in a second, just stay right there.”

Stein doesn’t answer but he doesn’t move either, and Spirit disappears back out the door and down the hall. The sound of the faucet running comes back through the open door and Stein is reminded strongly of their assignment in Germany, the way steam filled up the room and his lungs both, the way Spirit’s hair stuck to his shoulders.

Spirit is faster this time, apparently forgoing a shower in favor of speed. His shoes are gone, his bare feet padding across the floor, but his shirt and pants are still on.

He stops in the doorway, shy again. “Hey.” His eyes are bright but he swallows hard; he keeps looking at Stein, meeting his eyes and then flickering away with rising color. “Uh.”

Stein comes forward to meet him, stepping in close until Spirit has to tip his head up if he wants to watch his face. He doesn’t, fixes his eyes on Stein’s collar instead, reaches up to brush his fingers over the white triangle at Stein’s throat.

“So.” Stein’s fingers skim over the weapon’s shirt, catch on the top button. “I assume you don’t usually wear this to bed.”

Spirit smiles involuntarily. “Not usually, no.”

The button slides loose and Stein shifts to the second one. “What  _do_  you usually wear?”

“Uh.” Spirit’s blush is so hot Stein can feel it radiating against his skin. “Not much. Actually.”

“ _Really_.” The front of Spirit’s shirt comes open, the fabric slides off his shoulders, and Stein trails his hands down over the exposed skin to the top of Spirit’s pants. “These come off too?”

Spirit whines in what Stein assumes is agreement and the meister unfastens the button on his slacks, slides the zipper down until the waistband comes loose, fabric pools on the floor, and Spirit can step free.

“You keep doing this,” Spirit manages, voice high and almost a laugh. “It’s  _really_  not fair.”

“Mm.” Stein wraps his fingers around Spirit’s hips, over the top edge of his boxers, tips in to exhale hot over the weapon’s neck. “You should take some  _initiative_.”

Spirit laughs, but the sound is so shaky Stein’s not sure he’s processed the meaning until his hand drops from the top edge of Stein’s collar to the bottom of his shirt.

“What do you have against buttons?” Spirit asks, trying to flatten his voice to teasing as he pulls at the fabric. Stein releases his hands, lifts his arms up so Spirit can tug his shirt free before he comes back in, close enough that their chests brush together.

“Nothing,” Stein answers into Spirit’s hair. “They’re just inconvenient.”

“And sewing your shirts on isn’t?” Spirit’s fingers trace over the thread scars along Stein’s arms.

“It hasn’t been a problem in the past.” Stein smiles out of Spirit’s periphery. “Maybe more so now.”

“You’re insane,” Spirit offers without venom. He lets Stein’s arms go in favor of undoing the fly of his jeans. “Absolutely insane.”

Stein laughs, trails his fingers along the top edge of Spirit’s waistband. “I know.”

They have to separate for a moment once Spirit has his jeans free so Stein can kick off his shoes and shed the offending clothing. It’s worth it for the way their bodies fit together after, the way Stein can fit his leg between Spirit’s and press against the weapon’s erection through just the thin fabric of his boxers and get a whimper against the bare skin of his shoulder.

“Okay,” Spirit says, his palm sliding down over Stein’s stomach and the newest line of stitches from their fight with Medusa. “I have work in the morning, I need to sleep.”

“Do you.”

“Yes, I do.” The words are drastically at odds with his voice, soft and high and breathy with want, and his fingers are dipping under the edge of Stein’s waistband and trailing heat as they go.

“Hm,” Stein says, warm against Spirit’s ear, and then he pulls back, stepping away as Spirit shudders at the sound and the heat.

Spirit opens his eyes, starts to come forward. “Where are you --”

Stein catches Spirit’s reaching hand, locks his fingers around the weapon’s wrist so it freezes in place. “You need to sleep, Spirit.” Spirit blinks at him. “You have work in the morning.”

Spirit groans, rolls his eyes, and when he pulls his hand away Stein lets him. “You are  _infuriating_ , you know that?” He throws himself onto the bed, pale limbs sprawled all across the dark sheets, and sighs dramatically. “ _Fine_. Happy now?”

Stein doesn’t answer, but he does drop to the bed next to Spirit, and the weapon shifts to make space for him, rolling onto his side so he is facing the meister.

“You’re really not going to sleep, are you?” he asks. His fingers come out to trail through Stein’s hair; the meister closes his eyes and tries not to whimper at the burn of contact against his scalp.

“Probably not.”

Spirit laughs without amusement. “I should have let you go home. You’d be less bored.”

“I won’t be bored.” Stein props himself up on one elbow, reaches out with his other hand to start patterning Spirit’s scars again. “I am  _fully_  capable of amusing myself while you sleep.”

“Mm, ominous,” Spirit says, but he is smiling and he shuts his eyes under Stein’s touch. His skin shifts as he breathes, hitches when he stutters an inhale as Stein’s fingers catch a particularly sensitive curve of rib or brush gentle over his nipples, and his scars twist in time with the movement of his skin.

The Soul Force scar is the biggest. Stein has to think through their interactions since Spirit left to confirm that he has just never seen the weapon with his shirt off since then, not until his semi-professional examination after the Kishin’s defeat. It didn’t show up, then, under the bruises and the burn all across Spirit’s skin, but it’s clear now, even faded as light as it ever will be. Stein’s hand fits into it perfectly, his fingers as long as they were at sixteen, and he imagines that it feels warm under his skin. He can feel Spirit’s heart pounding fast under his palm, outlined by the scar. It’s amazing he didn’t kill his partner; even in the haze of pain that washes out most of his immediate memories of the event, he remembers the panic, the total certainty that he had actually murdered Spirit until he received confirmation otherwise.

Spirit sighs, rolls onto his back so Stein can more easily access his skin, and Stein shifts his touch down, over the array of straight lines across the weapon’s chest and stomach and hips. He remembers most of those, remembers stitching them back together as neat as he knew how, remembers the pained burn of  _want_  and the taste of Spirit’s blood on his fingers, remembers the way Spirit’s skin felt against his lips the one time he kissed the weapon. His fingers brush over one of several nearly-identical scars, and Spirit shivers, sighs warm and pleased.

Stein lowers his whole hand to the weapon’s stomach, presses his palm flat into Spirit’s shifting skin, and looks up to his face. When he slides his hand down towards the weapon’s hips, Spirit’s forehead creases, he bites his lip, blood rises to the surface of his skin.

Stein raises his eyebrows even though Spirit’s can’t see him. “Weren’t you going to sleep?”

Spirit hisses at him, answers without opening his eyes. “You’re persuading me otherwise.”

“I’m a terrible influence.” Stein presses low into the give of abdomen, where the edge of elastic gaps between Spirit’s hips and over soft skin, and Spirit whines and arches his hips up.

“You  _really_  are,” he manages, and then Stein’s fingers brush over the heat of his cock and he gasps an inhale, his hands clenching at the blankets under him.

“You know,” Stein offers conversationally as he dips his hand lower and gains more contact. “I learned a new technique earlier today.”

Spirit makes a sound that is something of a whimper and something of a question. Stein’s not sure the weapon really understood him but he continues anyway.

“I find hands-on experience is best to  _really_  learn something.” He wraps his fingers entirely around Spirit’s cock, drags slow up over the skin, and Spirit groans. “Don’t you?”

“What?” Spirit asks, opening his eyes to blink at Stein, the blue hazy with pleasure and tinged with confusion.

Stein smiles, more to himself than at his weapon, and slides down across the tangle of sheets until his mouth is level with Spirit’s hips and he can pull the weapon’s boxers down an inch to free his cock from the cloth.

“So,” he says, voice steady and mouth close enough that his breath makes Spirit whine. “How do I start?”

“Uh.” Spirit frees his hands from the blankets, drags them through his hair, comes up onto his elbows to look down at Stein. “Huh. Yeah. Okay.” He breathes out, carefully slow. “Lead with your lips, not your teeth.”

“Hm.” Stein licks his lips, leans in to take the head of Spirit’s cock into his mouth.

“Oh  _god_ ,” Spirit manages. Stein dips lower, up again, and Spirit hisses and nearly falls back onto the bed. “You can use your tongue--” he starts, but the second syllable gets lost in an inhale as Stein slides his tongue carefully all up along the cock in his mouth. “ _Yeah_. That. Good. And…ah…” Stein looks up past his hair and Spirit is staring at him, mouth open and eyes wide, and he is sure nothing has ever been more scintillating than Spirit shocked into silence watching him suck him off.

Stein looks back down, comes in farther; Spirit was using his hand too, he remembers, but there’s still plenty of space in his mouth, he can go a lot farther. He braces Spirit where he is, holding him down by his hips into the bed, and slides down as far as he can go, until the end of Spirit’s cock hits the back of his mouth.

Spirit moans, falls back onto the bed with his hands coming up over his face, and he sounds like he is falling to pieces and Stein is  _sure_  he needs to hear more of that. He changes angles, tips his head back, and this time Spirit goes past his mouth and into his throat.

“ _Stein_ ,” Spirit says, perfectly clear in spite of the high pitch and the hands covering his face, and Stein has to pull away so he can grin. Spirit lifts his hands, stares at the ceiling. “ _Where_  did you learn how to do that?”

“Experimentation,” Stein says, and Spirit laughs high and surprised, and the meister comes back to wrap his lips around Spirit’s cock again so the laughter cuts into a gasped inhale halfway through.

It is difficult to find a rhythm, hard to keep track of pacing with his head moving instead of his hand, and Spirit keeps trying to buck his hips up involuntarily, but once Stein presses his weight down to hold the weapon in place and focuses just on the dip of his head it goes better, Spirit’s disjointed words turning into a continuous moan that rises and falls like music in time with Stein’s movements. He comes down all the way again, taking Spirit as far down his throat as he can, and as he comes back he sucks and pulls his tongue down Spirit’s length, and Spirit gasps himself into silence and comes, thick and hot against Stein’s tongue. The taste is familiar from his own hands earlier, and there’s less of it, but it’s still salty and bitter and thick, the texture as much a part of the taste as the rest of it, and Stein swallows and slides his mouth free.

When he releases Spirit’s hips the weapon doesn’t move, just lies limp on the bed breathing hard. Stein comes back up the bed, drops to lie flat next to the other man. Spirit sighs, turns over to half-fall out of bed, and goes to the door to turn the light off. When he returns he crawls in close, drapes an arm across Stein’s chest and a leg over the meister’s.

“Your turn?” he asks, the words slow and soft into Stein’s shoulder.

Stein twists to slide his arm under Spirit’s head so the weapon is resting on his shoulder. “No. Just sleep.” The weapon is half-asleep already, and this is wonderful in itself, and Stein is beginning to believe that there will be other days for more.

He stares at the darkness of the ceiling and listens to Spirit’s breathing drifting slow against his skin, lets the weapon’s heat soak into him until he shuts his eyes and slides into not-quite-sleep himself.


	7. Clothes

Spirit can’t remember the last time he was this warm. He has a crick in his neck and his arm is asleep and really this  _shouldn’t_  be comfortable, but when his alarm goes off behind him he groans and tucks his head in against skin rather than reaching to turn it off.

He’s not entirely awake, in spite of the beeping, and he’s too tired to jump when a hand brushes over his hair, but he does blink his eyes open and try to orient himself. He’s at a strange angle, sprawled at an incline over his bed, and he is against something radiating heat. Then he shifts his hand, comes up against odd texture under his fingers, and realizes that he’s half on top of Stein, who has one hand tangled up in his hair and is smiling out over the top of his head.

“Hn,” Spirit manages semi-coherently, and reaches around behind him to turn the alarm off. And misses. He tries again, hits nothing but air, and as he twists to see what he’s doing Stein comes up to lean over and hit the snooze button himself.

“Don’t  _laugh_  at me,” Spirit grumbles. They reverse positions as the meister moves so his words are somewhat muffled against Stein’s shoulder, but they are clear enough.

Not that they have any effect. Stein is still grinning when he drops back on one elbow to the bed, amusement coloring his voice as he offers, “Sorry.”

“No you’re not.” Spirit reaches up to shove Stein down on his back and the meister lets him. It’s not enough force to knock him back otherwise, but he appreciates the meister’s willingness to comply. “Morning. Did you sleep at all?” His mouth sounds about as sticky as it feels and he could really use some coffee but he’s never felt Stein this warm before and it is really hard to tell himself to move.

“A little, actually. You’re a good influence.”

“One of us has to be.” Spirit’s fingers are finding their way along Stein’s ribcage, exploring the clean edges of old combat scars and the rougher patterns of deliberate stitches that run in diagonals over the meister’s chest. “What did you  _do_  the rest of the night?”

“Watched you,” Stein says, as if it is a fully reasonable answer. “You drool in your sleep.”

Spirit flushes. “Sorry.”

Stein’s forehead creases into confusion. “You apologize for the strangest things, Spirit.”

Spirit makes a noncommittal sound, shifts so he can follow the line of stitching all the way across Stein’s chest. It looks like it goes all the way around the meister’s body, from what Spirit can tell from his angle. “When did you do this?”

“It was over several years,” Stein answers. He lies still under Spirit’s touch, staring up at the ceiling; Spirit’s pretty sure he’s not actually seeing anything there at all, from the glaze in his green eyes. “Experimentation, first. I thought I would be a better test subject than someone else in case something went wrong.”

Spirit’s eyebrows draw together, flinching from the thought. “What if something  _had_?”

Stein shrugs but doesn’t answer, like the result would have been too trivial to note, and Spirit very suddenly wants to cry, has to still the motions of his hand and blink until the burn behind his eyes has faded. When he speaks again he has carefully leveled off his voice so it is a fair approximation of Stein’s usual tone. “Just experimenting on yourself?”

“Not the whole time.” Stein says at the ceiling. “I liked the way the stitches looked while incisions were healing. Rather like the appeal of tattoos, I suppose. Most of those long ones were largely aesthetic.”

“You cut across your entire body for  _aesthetics_?” Spirit asks, then continues before Stein has a chance to answer. “How did you manage your back?”

“A mirror,” Stein responds, like it’s the most obvious thing in the world, and Spirit still wants to a cry a little but it’s turning into laughter in his throat, so he chokes into mild hysteria for a moment.

“I’m serious,” Stein says, but his mouth is tight at one corner like he’s fighting off a smile. Spirit tips his head down to rest his forehead against Stein’s collarbone, presses his mouth against Stein’s heated skin so when he speaks the words are damp over stitches.

“You are out of your mind.” He purses his lips into a kiss over the scars and Stein hisses an inhale. “Absolutely and entirely insane.” He shifts his weight sideways, trails his tongue down over the pattern. The texture is familiar from his own temporary sutures after combat, but he’s never felt them under his tongue before, never felt the pull of skin as the owner breathes under his lips. He sighs, deliberate exasperation. “This is where I’ve chosen to place my affections.” He shakes his head but his mouth is warm and sliding slick over the patterned skin, and Stein is breathing hard and irregular  _already_ , and Spirit is becoming very aware that Stein is just as prone to morning wood as he is and neither of them is awake enough for it to have entirely faded.

When he slides his hand down to Stein’s hip the meister actually  _whines_ , and his hands come up to Spirit’s head. They land light and hesitant against hair, and Spirit doesn’t know why Stein should be so afraid to touch him, like Spirit’s going to jerk away, when he’s had the meister’s cock in his mouth and currently has his tongue against Stein’s chest, but it makes him smile still, drag his teeth gently over the stitches. Stein inhales hard, arches his back up into Spirit’s touch, and Spirit’s fingers slide along the line of his hipbone and…

The alarm goes off again. Spirit  _does_  jump this time, then groans and pulls free, reaches over to turn it off for good.

“You have to go,” Stein says when he looks back. The meister is flat on his back and his eyes are hazy when he looks at Spirit, and his cock has some very clear ideas about what they should be doing, and Spirit has some truly excellent hypotheses of his own, and Stein is right.

“I do,” he says. He can’t help reaching out, though, running his fingers along the diagonal line of stitches now damp from his tongue. “I do,” but that lacks force, he’s cutting back along the other zigzag path, and Stein catches his wrist and sits up, leaning into Spirit’s personal space so the weapon doesn’t have time to draw back.

“How do you ever get anything done,” he asks, but his other hand is on the back of Spirit’s neck and Spirit is looking at his mouth and then Stein’s lips are on his, mouth coming open and tongue slipping past his teeth. Spirit hums, leans in, and Stein pulls back, holding him off by the grip on his wrist and his neck.

“ _Go_ ,” he says, and shoves Spirit away hard enough that the weapon slides off the edge of the bed and has to fumble to catch his balance. “You’re ridiculous.”

“ _You_  kissed  _me_ ,” Spirit protests, but he is going, retreating to the bathroom to shower because if he keeps looking at Stein’s sleep-tangled hair and stitched skin against the folds of his sheets he’s going to forget both their responsibilities.

He doesn’t take a cold shower per se, but the water is certainly cooler than he usually runs it, and his sense of running late keeps him from actually doing anything about his determined erection. He tries to think about other things -- his plans for the day, Lord Death’s voice, Azusa’s judgmental glare -- but his mind keeps veering sideways to Stein, and eventually the only thing that keeps him from jerking off is the faint possibility that he might be able to get the meister to help.

It  _is_  unlikely, he knows, and he doesn’t really have time for it anyway, but it’s still disappointing to come back into the bedroom to find Stein pulling his shirt back on over his head.

“Hey,” the meister says as he turns to face Spirit, tugging the bottom edge of his shirt down like it’ll help smooth out the wrinkles in the fabric. His eyes start at Spirit’s face but immediately slide down over the weapon’s damp chest to the towel around his hips. His eyebrow comes up over the edge of his reinstated glasses, and Spirit would snap at him for that but for the way the meister’s mouth comes very slightly open like he can’t quite remember how to shut it.

“Enjoying the view?” Spirit offers. He intends for it to sound snarky. It comes out like an invitation.

Stein grins, sits back on the edge of the bed, and folds his arms over his chest “I am, thanks.”

Spirit rolls his eyes and turns so Stein won’t see the smile that is pulling over his mouth. He goes to the closet to pull out one of his shirts, pulls it on with more difficulty than usual because he can  _feel_  Stein’s gaze hot on his back and can’t remember how to manage his sleeves with that sensation on his skin. The buttons are almost as bad; they take him so long that Stein finally offers, “Need some help?” with a laugh under the monotone of his voice.

“No,” Spirit snaps, “I’m fine, thanks.” But then he has to get his pants on, and Stein is  _still_  just staring at him, and he’s not going to ask the meister to look away, that’s ridiculous, he’s basically seen everything he’s going to see, so Spirit keeps his head down to cover his absurd illogical blush and tosses the towel over the end of the bed while he goes for a new pair of boxers.

Stein doesn’t say anything. Spirit can’t even hear him breathe, which is for the best because his hands are shaky with an odd combination of embarrassment and arousal and he really just wants to get his  _clothes_  on as quickly as possible. Then he’s covered, mostly, and he turns back around and lifts his head and actually  _sees_  Stein’s face.

The meister’s head is tipped, angled to the side like a bird, and his eyes are against Spirit’s hip for now and not his face, but his fingers are caught against the edge of his lip like he’s forgotten they’re there and there is no trace of a smile, just a distant haze in his eyes and over his features and Spirit suddenly wants to undo all the work he has just done to get mostly dressed.

Stein blinks, his eyes come up to Spirit’s face, and even  _then_  he doesn’t smile, just stares at the weapon like he’s never seen him before. Spirit’s eyes drop down of their own accord, to the front of the meister’s pants, and then back up as fast as he can regain control of them, but he is blushing anyway, and  _now_  Stein is grinning, slow amusement spreading over his face, and Spirit looks away and goes for his pants before he gets more distracted.

Finally he is dressed, pants on and shirt tucked in and jacket settled over his shoulders, and he shakes his damp hair back over his shoulders and  _that’s_  when Stein stands, slides his stupid hands into his stupid pockets and comes towards Spirit. He stops way too close and nothing like close enough, and Spirit is blushing again but this appears to be standard practice at this point and he gives up trying to control it.

“You ready?” he offers. His voice shakes but he tries to ignore it.

Stein shrugs. “I’m going to go back to the lab and change. I’ve still got some time before my first class of the day.”

“Lucky you,” Spirit says. He clears his throat. It doesn’t help his blush. “I’ll see you there.”

“I’m sure.”

Stein makes no move, either away from him or to bridge the distance, just keeps watching Spirit like he’s waiting for something else. Spirit’s face goes hotter as he waits, and finally he blurts, “Are you going to kiss me or what?”

Stein laughs, looks away, then back, and leans in. His hands stay in his pockets but his mouth brushes soft just against Spirit’s lips, just enough contact that Spirit’s mouth lights up with sensation and he leans in for more.

Stein pulls back, steps away. “I’ll see you there,” he echoes, and he is  _smirking_  and there is laughter in his voice and he is  _teasing_  Spirit, he is going to  _pay_  for that, but the weapon is also actually going to be late if he doesn’t leave  _right now_ , so Spirit just huffs a sigh and leads the way out of the room and tries to ignore Stein’s muffled laugh from over his shoulder.


	8. Guilt

“Stein.”

The meister doesn’t recognize the voice for a moment. He stops halfway up a flight of stairs, turns back towards the speaker, and only when he sees the black eyepatch and yellow hair does he realize who it is.

“Marie,” he says, and then he realizes he should have something more of a response and tries a smile. It comes easier than usual. Students part around him and he moves to come down the flight to the landing where the weapon is standing. “I haven’t seen you in days, how are you?”

She smiles back, and if it trembles at the corner he doesn’t say anything. “I’m doing well. Thanks. Azusa’s been surprisingly sweet, actually.”

Stein can’t stop his raised eyebrows. “Not a word I ever would have expected to apply to her.”

Marie laughs and looks away. “Yeah, same here. I mean she and I have always gotten along better than the two of you, but…” She cuts herself off deliberately, clears her throat and swallows. “Actually. I wanted to let you know the news, since you’ll be the most affected by it.”

Stein tips his head, and after a moment Marie takes a deep breath and continues without looking at him. “I found an apartment. Um. I should be moving out today, after classes are over; most of my stuff is at Azusa’s so there shouldn’t be much, but I thought you should know since I  _have_  been invading your space all this time.”

“Oh.” Stein isn’t sure what to offer in response. He has been only minimally aware of Marie’s lingering presence at the lab, especially over the last few days since she started sleeping at Azusa’s and he started spending as much time as possible at Spirit’s own apartment. “Ah. That’s good.”

_Something more_ , Spirit prods from the back of his head.  _Say something else_. “I’m glad you found a place so soon.”

Marie laughs and looks up and she’s not crying, and that is a relief. There was a catch in her words, a stutter that usually indicates tears in Spirit’s case, and Stein still doesn’t know how to handle that particular response.

“It’s okay, you know,” she says, and that hiccup of air is still there but her eye is dry. “It’s been really awkward since you came back, I think we all know that. It’ll be better if we just acknowledge it.”

Something about the phrasing isn’t quite Marie, though the tone is of course hers. Stein angles his head. “Is that what Azusa said?”

Marie giggles. “Yeah. She’s right, though. She’s been right all this time, actually, about most things.”

“She usually is.” It’s not a compliment, just a statement of fact. Still, Stein is glad that the other weapon isn’t around to hear it from him directly. “Tonight, then?”

“Yeah.” Marie looks away again, down and to the side. “Thanks for letting me stay at the lab all this time.”

“It wasn’t a problem.” Stein answers truthfully. “You’re easy to live with.”

“I’m glad you think so.” Marie takes a deep breath, looks up past Stein’s shoulder so she is almost but not quite making eye contact. “I am sorry for...uh. Waiting. For you. For not saying something.”

Stein nearly laughs, catches the sound just as it spills from his throat. “You and Spirit both like apologizing for things that aren’t your fault. Does it make you feel better?”

Marie laughs and meets his eyes. “It does, actually. Helps relieve the guilt a little.”

“I just don’t understand why you feel guilty in the first place.” Stein sighs, smiles. “Thanks.”

Marie draws back, her forehead creasing in confusion. “For what?”

“You’re a great weapon partner.” Stein’s smile turns sharp, into a grin. “I’m not the easiest meister to deal with.”

“No, you’re --” Marie starts automatically. Then she cuts herself off, smiles. “You know, you’re  _really_  not. I don’t really envy Spirit as much as I thought I would.”

Stein laughs. It comes out softer than he intended, the thought of Spirit threading warmth through the sound, and Marie’s gaze goes gentle.

“Is it...going well, then?” The quake in her voice is back but her mouth is almost-a-smile at the corner.

Stein swallows and has to look away to steady his voice enough to respond. “Yes. Yes, it’s going well.”

Marie sighs. “I’m glad.” Fingers reach out to brush Stein’s arm, a moment of contact before she pulls back. He looks down at her and now she  _does_  look like she’s about to cry, liquid gold in her eye but a smile across her lips. “Really. I’m so happy for you.”

Stein smiles, mirrors her gesture to rest a hand on her shoulder. “I’m sorry.”

Marie grins. “What was that about apologizing for things that aren’t your fault?” She reaches up to press her hand over his, then steps away. He lets his hand fall and she lifts hers in a minimal wave. “I have to go teach my next class. Good luck with...everything.”

“Thanks.”

Stein waits to leave until Marie is out of eyesight, and when he does turn back to continue he goes more slowly, distracted by the tangle of information he has but can’t quite fully interpret. It takes up so much of his attention that when he does find Spirit, heading towards him down the hallway leading out of the Death Room, he has almost forgotten his goal in looking in the first place.

Luckily Spirit himself is a good reminder, all unthinking grace and bright eyes, and when the weapon sees Stein a moment after the meister catches sight of him, his involuntary smile is brighter than any reasonable interpretation of the circumstances calls for. Stein doesn’t complain.

They stop in the middle of the hallway, a step closer than they would normally stand, and Spirit half-reaches for Stein’s wrist before he shoves his hands into his pockets and clears his throat. Stein doesn’t even start such a movement; years of practice have made his hands extremely obedient when he wants them to be, and his eyes are free to linger against the edge of Spirit’s collar and the fold of his shirt against the waistband of his slacks.

“Hey Stein,” Spirit says, and if his voice dips lower on the meister’s name than it has before, Stein isn’t going to call him out on it. “How’s...how’re classes?”

“Good,” Stein says. He isn’t listening to the question at all, all of his attention focused on the rhythm of Spirit’s heatbeat just over the knot of his tie. “You?”

“Ah.” Spirit reaches up to straighten the tie so his fingers skim along his own skin. “Good. I’m. I’m good.”

“Good,” Stein echoes back. “Are you busy?”

“What?” Spirit swallows. “What, like, right now? Not this second, I’ve got another meeting later this afternoon, but--”

“Excellent.” Stein looks up from the weapon’s neck to his eyes, and Spirit’s eyebrows raise in response to whatever expression the meister has a moment before Stein reaches out to grab the lapels of Spirit’s coat and pull him into a kiss.

Spirit squeaks in surprise, falls forward as Stein pulls, and catches himself against the meister’s shoulders before he pulls away fractionally. “ _Stein_ , what are you  _doing_ , we’re--”

“We have a couple minutes.” Stein’s words spill hot over Spirit’s lips. “Someone’s coming but they’re a floor away yet,” and Spirit is back, mouth warm and wet against Stein’s and fingers against the back of the meister’s neck and head. Stein steps in over the remaining distance, fits his knee between Spirit’s, and if there was a  _wall_  he would shove Spirit up against it but they’re in the middle of the extra-wide Academy corridor.

Spirit is laughing breathlessly against Stein’s mouth, half-formed words spilling over Stein’s skin. “What are we  _doing_ , we’ll be  _caught_ , someone will  _see_ ,” but he is gulping air faster with every word and Stein can  _feel_  him going hard against his thigh, and when Stein pulls back enough to grin, “Are you an  _exhibitionist_ , Spirit?” the weapon laughs high and comes back in for more, digging his hips into Stein’s until the meister is hissing for air as much as the weapon.

It is Stein who lets go first, relaxing his hold on Spirit’s coat and stepping back. The weapon follows, whining at the back of his throat, until Stein asks, “Do you  _want_  to be walked in on?”  _That_  gets him to jump back, smoothing his coat and tie and hair with shaking hands, and while his clothes fall into place easily enough the color high in his cheeks and all across his mouth makes it  _abundantly_  clear what he has been doing to anyone who cares to look.

“So,” Spirit says, hands still trembling against his clothes and eyes fixed on the floor, the walls, the corridor, anything but Stein. He blushes harder anyway. “Are you, uh, busy tonight?”

The words are generic enough that they won’t tip off the student approaching down the corridor, but Stein’s mind more than makes up for the lack of specificity in the invitation.

“No,” he starts to say before he remembers. “Actually. Marie’s moving out.”

Spirit’s blush fades entirely underneath his surprise. “What?”

“She found an apartment. She’s moving the last of her things out tonight.”

“Oh.” Spirit sighs, pulls his hand through his mostly-straightened hair. “Shit. I feel really bad about that.”

Stein very nearly says something about weapons and their misdirected guilt, but he has a suspicion it won’t go over as he intends. Instead he offers, “So not tonight. Unfortunately. If you want to come over tomorrow you can come to the lab, though.”

Spirit raises his eyebrows in mock suspicion, but a smile pulls at the corner of his mouth in spite of the darkness of sympathy still in his eyes. “What, you need a new test subject?”

Stein doesn’t bother answering, just lifts one eyebrow and lets Spirit fill in the answer all on his own. After a moment color flushes the weapon’s skin and he looks away. His laughter is self-deprecating but tinged with genuine pleasure, mouth curling into a smile despite his efforts to keep it neutral. “Yeah, okay. Sure. Tomorrow it is.”

“You have to get back to your meeting,” Stein points out as the student comes past them, eyes on the book in her hands and not on them. For the best, really.

Spirit sighs. “Yeah, I do. I guess I’ll see you around tomorrow, then.” He only barely hesitates before turning to follow the girl in the direction of the Death Room.

Stein watches him go until the weapon is out of sight.


	9. Entry

This time Spirit isn’t anxious when he comes up the hill to the lab, or at least not anxious about being rejected. He  _is_  on edge, high-strung from want and anticipation blending into a cocktail of adrenaline that overrides even his lingering guilt about chasing Marie out of what has been her home since her return to Death City.

There will be time to feel guilty later. Right now it has been over a day since he really touched Stein and two days since he got any satisfaction beyond the quick-and-dirty route of his own skill, and in his current state this is far longer than Spirit’s body wants.

The door opens before Spirit can knock, which speaks to Stein using Soul Perception on him and also leaves the weapon with one hand half-raised to rap on the door. He would feel awkward if he weren’t so busy grinning foolishly at Stein, who looks as delighted to see Spirit as the weapon feels to be here.

“Hi,” Spirit offers after it becomes clear that Stein is just going to  _look_  at him by way of greeting.

Stein’s gaze drops to Spirit’s mouth and lingers there as he speaks. “How much polite lead-in do you want before I jerk you off against the wall?”

Spirit’s eyebrows jump past his hairline. He opens his mouth to respond but all that emerges is a sort of high keening whine; then his feet are bringing him forward and he is reaching for the shoulders of Stein’s coat and all Stein’s extra height and breadth do nothing to stop him from shoving the meister bodily against the hallway. His fingers release cloth, seize on hair instead to hold Stein’s head in place, and Stein is laughing, the sound bubbling up his throat until it catches the corners of his eyes, and then Spirit’s mouth is on his and the purr of the noise is against his tongue and lips and teeth instead of the air.

Fingers catch Spirit’s hair, curl around the back of his neck, and Stein has stopped laughing and is humming now instead, probably without meaning to, and for a minute there is just the taste of secondhand nicotine across Spirit’s tongue and the heat of skin sliding over his.

Then Stein pulls back and Spirit blinks himself back into visual awareness and Stein is grinning and his eyes are sliding over Spirit’s face, eyebrows, cheeks, chin, lips, back around again.

“Not much, then,” he observes.

Spirit smiles, leans in to brush past Stein’s cheek and breathe in the cinnamon-smell of his hair. “Do you  _know_  how unsatisfying it is to get myself off when I wanted it to be you?”

Stein’s breath hitches as Spirit speaks, but when he answers his voice is level and dry with amusement. “I have some inkling, yes.”

Spirit grins, presses the corner of his mouth against Stein’s neck in not a kiss as much as just contact, absorbing all of the meister that he can reach through his eyes, nose, mouth. Stein hums again and Spirit can taste it under his lips, can feel the meister’s skin tremble as he slides his hand up under Stein’s shirt to get at the warmth of his stomach and hip.

Stein speaks again as Spirit’s fingers comes around to his abdomen, catch at the front of his pants. “Did you want to shut the door first?”

“What?” Spirit half-turns his head to see the daylight streaming in through the still-open door. “Oh. Uh.”

“I don’t have many visitors,” Stein offers. It shouldn’t sound as much like an invitation as it does. “We’re unlikely to be disturbed.”

Spirit is staring out at the light, half-blinded by the brightness, and his hands are stalled against Stein’s skin, and then the meister is gripping his shoulders and turning him gently around to trade places with him. He sets Spirit back against the wall, and when Stein leans back Spirit expects him to go to shut out the afternoon light.

Then Stein grins, and the sharp underlying the expression is the primary warning Spirit gets before the meister’s hands come to the front of his slacks.

“Oh fuck,” he offers coherently. “Really?”

Stein pulls his gaze up from the fly of his pants to his eyes and arches an eyebrow. “Are you complaining?”

Spirit opens his mouth and he isn’t sure if he’s going to tell Stein to stop or to continue, but before he can compose an answer Stein presses his palm against his erection through the front of his pants and the sound that comes out is unquestionably an affirmation.

Stein grins. “That’s what I thought,” he says, and then he’s on his knees in front of the weapon and Spirit’s pants are undone, and he’s not sure if he wants to watch for approaching viewers or watch Stein in front of him, so he tries to do both and just ends up blind.

He can’t see clearly, sunlight is spotting his vision black and shadowy, but he can feel Stein pulling at his shirt, tugging it free of his undone waistband so the meister’s fingers can hold him steady against the wall. His shirt comes up, there is a breath of air, and Stein’s mouth presses warm against the bottom edge of one of his scars, just over where his belt usually sits. Spirit laughs, breathy with pleasure, and Stein’s fingers come across and down to slide his cock free from his boxers. Spirit hisses at the contact, lets his head fall back against the wall, and there is still a flicker of panic along his spine -- what if someone comes, what if they are  _caught_  -- but it is coalescencing into excitement and the thrill of danger even as he sucks in air, and then the meister’s mouth closes around his cock and everything but satisfaction goes right out of his head.

“ _Fuck_  Stein,” he manages; he’d angle his hips forward, Stein is only just  _barely_  touching him, but the meister’s fingers are back at his hips and holding him in place and he might as well be tied down for all the motion he manages to achieve.

Stein pulls away, and when Spirit blinks the spots from his eyes the meister is grinning at him, his mouth pulled lopsided with amusement and sunlight catching off the lens of his glasses closest to the door.

“Stop  _wiggling_ ,” he says. “Or I won’t be able to continue.”

“I’m  _not_  wiggling,” Spirit lies. Stein rolls his eyes and comes back in, keeps his eyes on Spirit until he is looking up at the weapon over the top of his glasses instead of through them, and Spirit did not realize until he saw it how much he has wanted to watch Stein sucking him off. He makes a strange sound, a sort of strangled laugh, and Stein’s lips pull tighter into a repressed smile and he drops his eyes back to linger against the skin of Spirit’s stomach as he dips his head back in.

Spirit can’t figure out where he wants his hands, against Stein’s hair or dragging through his own, and they keep fluttering back and forth, sensation pulling over his face or soft silver hair catching across his palms, and just when he thinks he can keep his hands down and steady against Stein’s face the meister hums vibration over his tongue or dip so low Spirit bottoms out against the back of his throat, and his hands come back over his face like he can somehow catch back the raw wail that pulls from his throat.

Stein drags back, pulling his tongue wet over Spirit before he looks up over his glasses with a shadow under the color in his eyes that would be entirely obscene if Spirit were in any position to note such things. “Careful, Spirit.” He trails his tongue over his lower lip and makes a much greater show of swallowing than is at all necessary so Spirit’s eyes drag to the collar of his shirt and stay there as he goes on. “Someone might  _hear_  you.”

Spirit laugh-groans at this reminder, and then Stein’s mouth is back, and the meister relaxes his jaw and comes in deep, deeper, until his mouth brushes the weapon’s abdomen and Spirit can feel Stein’s throat working around his cock, and this is  _ridiculous_  how on  _earth_  did Stein learn how to  _do_  this and then the meister backs off, comes back just as far, and Spirit’s thoughts drift apart into the incoherency of pleasure.

Stein keeps holding him still, backed up against the wall, and Spirit’s fingers go numb against silver hair, and finally it is the sunlight of the open door that does it, pushes him over the edge until his hips actually do come off the wall in spite of Stein’s hold and his sun-blind eyes go white and unfocused for a moment.

“ _Fuck_ ,” he says even before he can see again, as Stein is pulling away,. “ _Jesus_  Stein, I… _fuck_  two days is too long,” and his shaking knees are giving out and he is sliding down the wall and toppling forward and Stein goes over backward under his weight. The meister’s mouth tastes like salt and smoke against Spirit’s tongue.

“Agreed,” Stein manages to get out, and then his mouth is too occupied with Spirit’s lips and tongue to make any coherent sounds but that’s okay, his hands are coming up under the weapon’s shirt and brushing cool and callused over Spirit’s skin and he is shifting, twisting half-free so Spirit can get his own hand down between them to the meister’s pants.

He pulls back, laughter finally demanding more of his mouth than he had available to offer. “Someday I’ll, uh, get you to a bed for this you know.”

“I look forward to it,” Stein grins, and Spirit’s body is doing its very best to ignore his usual recovery time at the timbre in the meister’s voice.

“Yeah,” he says, “Good,” and Stein is laughing at him and reaching down to take the place of his fumbling hands and manage his fly himself. Spirit would protest but he can feel the faintest of trembles in the meister’s hands, and it is reassuring proof that Stein is affected, if not to the same extent as Spirit himself is. And then his hands are clear and Spirit’s fingers are sliding under cloth to find hot skin and Stein sucks in air, lips just shy of Spirit’s ear, and that is worth anything.

Spirit sets his mouth against Stein’s neck, trails his tongue over the meister’s indoor-pale skin, and Stein turns his head to give him better access and sighs, low and satisfied. His body relaxes under Spirit’s, like he’s waiting for pleasure to come find him instead of seeking it, and even when Spirit curls his fingers around his cock he just breathes in deep and slow and purring, reaches up to brush Spirit’s hair with his fingers.

Spirit is getting better at this getting-someone-else-off thing; the angle is still a little odd, but the backwards motion no longer feels entirely foreign, and when he tightens his fingers on the up stroke like he always does to himself Stein appears to like it too, chokes on a breath before returning to that slow rhythm against Spirit’s cheek and ear.

Deliberate relaxation notwithstanding, Spirit can tell when the meister is close, can feel the tremors in the hand against his hair and the almost-pull of stomach and thigh under him as the meister fights back the upward tilt of hip to hand. He smiles against Stein’s hair, tips his head to lay his cheek against the meister’s, and when he breathes “ _Stein_ ,” hot against the curve of ear Stein groans and comes, his hand pulling tight against hair for just a moment.

Spirit slides his hand free, pushes himself to his feet and goes for the door before Stein has time to collect himself. By the time the meister is on his feet the door is shut, the hallway is lit only by the interior electricity, and Spirit has at least refastened his pants if not straightened his shirt.

“Shy?” Stein asks, kicking his pants free instead of pulling them back into position. “You didn’t seem to be a minute ago.”

“Delayed reaction,” Spirit answers without thinking, following Stein farther into the laboratory. “Sorry.”

Stein half-turns to glance at him, grins. “Don’t be. This is important information, you know. There are all  _sorts_  of semi-public places at the Academy.”

Spirit’s mind steps up to offer a beautifully clear image of Stein’s classroom and the variety of positions he could be in within it before he chokes as the blood in his body tries to all rush to the same place.

Stein doesn’t even turn. “That’s what I thought.” He rounds a corner, reaches for a door, and Spirit is trailing him past the entrance before he realizes it’s the meister’s bedroom.

It doesn’t look much like a bedroom, other than the obvious presence of a bed against the wall. Spirit is used to his own bedroom, full of clothes and disarray; Stein’s is very clean, very grey, and very cold. The bed is neatly made, the top blanket marked with the everpresent stitched pattern, but it has the crisp edges of a hotel room, something rarely used by the occupant.

“When were you last in here?” Spirit asks while Stein goes to the closet to locate a fresh pair of pants.

“Hm. Not sure.” There is a brief distraction while the meister finishes changing -- Spirit can’t quite keep his focus on the conversation at hand when Stein is nonchalantly  _moving_  like that -- and then he is turning back and fastening the zipper and button. “I think I slept in your bed most recently.”

Spirit sighs. “You  _have_  to sleep more.”

Stein shrugs off-hand, not quite making eye contact. “It’s not been a problem before. And it’s hard to sleep alone.”

“We can  _fix_  that,” Spirit is saying before he’s thought the words through.

Stein’s gaze comes up fast, locking Spirit’s where it is before he can look away. He swallows, takes a visible breath, and when he speaks his voice is flat and toneless like it was after the Kishin’s revival when they were barely speaking to each other. “Don’t tease me, not about this.”

“I’m not.” That comes fast too, but it clicks into place in Spirit’s head like the fact of it has always been there. “Really.”

Stein is staring at him like he’s expecting a blow, like the space between them is as insurmountable as it has classically been, and Spirit steps in, crosses the distance and reaches out for Stein’s waist just to reassure himself he can. Stein holds very still, doesn’t speak or reciprocate, but he doesn’t pull back either. Spirit looks down, to the dark fabric pulled tight over Stein’s shoulder, and talks to the meister’s shoulder instead of his eyes.

“I mean. Look it’s...I don’t want to force myself back into your life. I guess I kind of have, already, but more than you want. And my apartment is great, I love having you there, but it’s empty without you, and I miss having you around, even when you’re insomniac-ing while I sleep.” He grins, half-laughs. “And I can’t be sure you’re even  _eating_ , on your own. I mean. Uh. We lived together for years, I think I’m used to all your quirks at this point.”

“I  _eat_ ,” Stein says, but he brings his hand out of his pocket to press his fingers against Spirit’s back. “Okay.”

Spirit’s gaze flickers up to green eyes. “Okay?”

“Yeah.” Stein is watching his face. He blinks once, tentative and careful, and then smiles, and Spirit leans in without thinking to kiss the edge of the meister’s mouth.


	10. One

Stein’s bed is  _much_  warmer when Spirit is in it. Part of that is the weapon’s consistently warmer skin, part of it is that Stein is much more frequently tangled in the blankets himself, but either way it has started to feel like the refuge he has heard it referred to by others. They haven’t sorted out any of their living details yet; Stein likes having his lab equipment close to hand, Spirit likes the familiarity of his apartment, but for now they leave for the Academy together, and at some point during the day, either while Spirit is painting paths of heat across Stein’s stomach with his fingertips or Stein is biting bruises into Spirit’s usually-hidden collarbone, one of them will offer, “My place?” and the other will nod or sigh or laugh in agreement and they will go back together. Spirit is everywhere in the lab, now, the color of his hair against Stein’s pillow and the lingering echo of his soul wavelength in the walls, until the stitches across Stein’s skin and the walls and his soul itself feel less like they are holding together something irrevocably broken and more like the faded memories of healing wounds.

Spirit’s fingers are in his hair at the moment; the weapon is in his preferred position, sprawled across Stein’s bed atop the twisted mess of the clothes he was wearing a few minutes ago and trailing his hands through the meister’s hair while Stein blows his exhales warm over the weapon’s chest and slides his hand over his hip. Spirit shivers, laughs softly under the contact.

“Spirit.” Stein intends the name to be a question  but it comes out a caress, and Spirit doesn’t answer out loud, just brushes his fingertips against Stein’s forehead. Stein smiles, tries again. “Spirit.”

“Mm?”

The hand against the curve of hip comes across and down, following the diagonal of skin and muscle. “I want to try something.”

“Sounds promising.” Stein can feel the weapon’s smile in the tension pulling tight over his chest, can see anticipation send blood down to the half-hard erection just below his fingers.

“There’s one other technique we haven’t explored yet.”

Spirit sucks in air, the sound half-panicked, but the skin just against Stein’s hand goes firm and the meister doesn’t have to look up to see the interest in the weapon’s face.

“Ah. Yeah. That…that is true.” Spirit swallows, takes a deep breath. “Stein, I’ve never…I can’t talk you through this.”

Stein ducks his head to press his mouth against skin. Breath flutters under his lips as Spirit exhales at the contact. “I’ve been studying.”

The laugh that bursts from the weapon is exactly what Stein was expecting, makes him smile in echoed amusement, and when Spirit speaks again his nerves aren’t audible anymore.

“You  _would_.” Spirit sighs, frees his hands, brings his elbows under his body to push himself half-up. Stein lifts his head in time with the weapon until they are facing each other, Stein holding himself up over Spirit’s body so he can soak in the weapon’s body heat, can lean in to kiss him at a moment’s notice.

Spirit’s eyes are wide and still showing the edge of worry that his voice lacks, but he meets and holds Stein’s gaze directly due to the meister’s current lack of glasses. “Yeah.” He swallows, blinks slowly, forces a smile. “Yeah, okay. Let’s do it.”

“Are you sure?” It’s not a plea, just a question.

Spirit sighs, smiles. “Yeah. Yes, I’m sure.”

“Okay.” Stein comes in over the distance, skims his lips over Spirit’s. “Good.” He parts his lips, traces the weapon’s mouth with the tip of his tongue. Spirit goes still, breathing carefully against Stein’s mouth so the meister can feel every time the weapon’s breath hitches in response to his own movement. He is absolutely sure he will never get tired of this, reading Spirit’s reactions from his breath and his smile and his eyes more clearly than Soul Perception could ever manage. It is intoxicating to understand someone so thoroughly, to be able to predict another person’s actions better than he can predict his own, so when he murmurs, “Lie back,” against Spirit’s lips he knows the weapon will go without protest until he is flat over the monochrome grey blankets.

Stein rocks back so he’s sitting on his heels, looking down at Spirit stretched out in front of him. The weapon is watching his eyes, a half-smile pulling at the edge of his lips, and he  _glows_  against the drab surroundings, light collecting against his shoulder, hip, the angle of his knee.

His laugh brings Stein’s attention away from general admiration and back to the task at hand. “We  _always_  end up this way,” the weapon observes, and even though it’s been days and weeks now the unit of the pronoun still sends heat flooding into Stein’s bones. “You know, I like looking at you at  _least_  as much as you like looking at me.”

Stein raises an eyebrow. “I doubt that,” he offers, but he does reach for the bottom of his shirt to twist it up and off before Spirit protests further. The air of the room is cold against his bare skin but Spirit’s eyes drag down over the scarred patterns of Stein’s chest, and the flood of responding heat is nearly enough to bring color to the meister’s ashy skin and more than enough to counteract the loss of the shirt.

Stein reaches out without leaning down, trails his fingertips down Spirit’s skin, along the lines of his chest and scarred abdomen. The weapon shuts his eyes, his smile settles into permanence, and he purrs a sound in his throat, bucks his hips up to clip Stein’s wrist with his cock.

“Anxious?” Stein teases, but he does drop his hand, trails his fingers over hot skin, and Spirit sighs in satisfaction and laughs without answering. The meister has gotten good at this, learned the slow pace that Spirit likes to start and the steady increase of speed and pressure that can pull him up to orgasm fastest, memorized exactly how slow he can go for how long before the weapon gets frustrated and desperate. He can play back entire scenes in his head, recall the movement of his hand and the way Spirit’s skin tastes and the way his hair smells, but the sound always just escapes him, comes back a little flat and a little predictable in his memory. Or maybe it is just that Spirit  _isn’t_  predictable in this, is always reinventing the responsive noises he makes over his tongue or in the back of his throat when Stein touches him. It doesn’t matter. Stein has his memories for practice and the real thing, now, and his nightmares have stopped, vanished after that very first day and not returned, and he can take his time now without the desperate need of childhood.

He is going too slow, deliberately under the minimum rate for Spirit’s satisfaction, and the weapon’s forehead is starting to crease in frustration, his hips coming up off the mattress in an attempt to win more speed out of the meister. Finally Spirit groans and opens his eyes.

“Are you  _trying_  to torture me?” The words are stretched tight over the tension in his body so Stein has to swallow back the temptation to give up on the slow build, to just curl over and on top of Spirit and kiss away the desperation and pull him apart as fast as possible.

He does, though, and when he smiles there is something of his determination in it because Spirit groans in resignation even before Stein says, “Not  _deliberately_.” Then he lets his grip go completely. He is expecting Spirit’s indignant response, the whine of protest and the weapon’s move to sit up, and he catches the motion with an extended hand so Spirit nearly shoves against it and only falls back at the last moment.

“Lie back,” he repeats himself. There’s an edge more of a command to it now, a drop in tone so it rolls over his tongue darker than before, and Spirit does as told while Stein leans over him, though his eyebrows are pulled together in frustration that is only somewhat feigned.

It takes Stein a minute to find the bottle of lube he left in the drawer, another to catch the slippery substance across his fingers, and by the time he comes back Spirit’s hands are against the weapon’s face, dragging trails of want over his skin in Stein’s absence. When the meister touches the inside of his thigh Spirit says, “ _Yes_ ,” the sound coming straight from his throat to Stein’s own cock, and the meister has to take a minute before he can breathe properly again.

Spirit sucks in a breath hard when Stein’s fingers brush over his entrance, but he sighs and relaxes against the sheets before the meister can even tell him to, and he doesn’t flinch when Stein’s finger slides into him. There’s more resistance initially than the meister expected but then less, and Spirit looks faintly curious but not nearly as panicked as Stein was afraid he would.

“Spirit?” he asks, just to hear the weapon’s voice.

“Yeah.” Spirit sounds dreamy, distant. He brings his right hand down to brush over his cock a moment before Stein catches up and takes over, left-handed but still coordinated enough. He sighs at the contact, tips his hips up, and Stein shifts his right hand in farther. “Yeah, I’m good.” He smiles, reaches out to brush his fingers against Stein’s hair. “It’s  _weird_  but --”

Stein curls his finger, presses against the weapon, and Spirit’s words splinter apart as he gasps. “ _Oh_. Good. Yes. That -- yes. That was good.” Stein tries again and Spirit  _groans_ , tips his hips up and his eyes are shut but his mouth is open like he can’t breathe, and when Stein slides out and pushes back in Spirit does it  _again_ , sounds like he’s choking on the very air he’s breathing and Stein’s eyebrows are way up, past where the edge of his glasses would be if he were still wearing them, he’s  _never_  seen Spirit like this, even when he got him off in one of the Academy closets while the adjoining hall was full of students.

Spirit makes a sound, a groan that’s very nearly a wail, and it’s not coherent at all but Stein knows by now, thinks he maybe has known his whole life that that sound means “more.” He has to swallow, realizes his mouth is open and he can’t remember how to close it, but he lets go of Spirit’s cock in favor of bracing the weapon’s hip and slowly fits another finger in next to the first.

It’s faster, this time, and Spirit’s whine rises in sync with Stein’s movements. And then Stein’s fingers are all the way in, as far as they can go, and Spirit sucks in air and blinks himself back into some focus. His eyes land on Stein staring at him and go soft even as he laughs, the sound shallow with self-consciousness.

“Am I  _that_  amazing?” he asks.

The question is full of self-deprecation and teasing but Stein’s answer is entirely sincere and instant, on his lips with no thought at all. “ _Yes_.”

The anxiety melts out of Spirit’s face as he goes wide-eyed at whatever was in Stein’s voice, and the meister shifts his fingers again and then the shock is gone too, Spirit groans and smiles and there is just pleasure in the lines of his face.

The angle makes it easy to establish a rhythm. Stein can watch his hand against Spirit, does for a minute until he realizes he’s not breathing and has to look away, but it’s easy to read Spirit’s reactions from this angle too, easy to see when his forehead creases with “too much” or when his mouth twists with “not enough” and very easy to find and stick to the off-set pace of thrusting with one hand and pulling with the other that relaxes his face and brings blood rising to the surface of his skin. When Stein separates his fingers, spreads Spirit a little wider, the weapon gasps, his hand comes up to his face in his tell for “more,” like he needs more sensation on his skin than Stein alone can provide.

His hands are still against his jaw and his cheek when Stein slides his fingers free. The weapon’s eyes come open and he sits up again; Stein doesn’t try to stop him this time, just lets go his hold on the weapon’s cock as well so he can be faster with his pants.

Spirit doesn’t talk, for once, looks before he speaks and reaches to help. Usually two pairs of hands are worse than one, fingers stumbling over each other to make an easy task nigh-impossible, but this time the weapon is exactly where Stein needs him, holding the waistband while the meister undoes the button and catching the zipper almost before the top has come loose. Stein is trying to stay calm, trying to stay in control of the situation, but Spirit is very close to him and he can  _feel_  the weapon’s panting breaths against his ear and if they didn’t have such an excellent goal he would shove Spirit back down, pin him to the bed, and kiss him until he can feel the weapon’s voice humming in his own throat. Luckily together they are fast enough that he has barely contemplated the alternative before Spirit is pulling his pants off and he is kicking out of them and settling back between the weapon’s legs. There is a moment of catch-up, because Stein can’t keep himself from kissing Spirit’s flushed lips with them so close and Spirit seems as anxious to trace all of Stein’s scars at once, and then Stein has pushed Spirit flat to the bed and is trying to catch his breath.

“Okay,” he manages, and he sounds like he’s hyperventilating but at least he is understandable. “Are you ready?”

Spirit’s hesitation is gone, lost somewhere between time and foreplay, and he is nodding before Stein is done. “Yes,  _yes_ ,” and it is tempting to let him plead for a minute but not enough. Stein slides his slippery fingers over his own cock, fast, not aiming for stimulation but just lubrication, and then comes forward, sets his hand on the mattress next to Spirit’s hip to brace his weight, and carefully lines himself up.

When he looks up Spirit is watching him, mouth open and eyes wide, and as Stein’s eyes meet his he licks his lower lip unintentionally. Stein laughs, startled and short, and he is looking at that blue when he slides inside Spirit.

They both make a sound that Stein is never after able to recall adequately, Spirit’s high moan blending with Stein’s lower gasp so it becomes a single noise in the space between them. Spirit says something mostly unintelligible, “God” or “Fuck” or “ _Stein_ ,” but Stein is too lost to hear, all his body demanding attention and brain entirely unclear on which pieces are him and which are Spirit. It’s like Resonance and better, heat and sensation both swamping his senses for a moment while he tries to remember how to breathe and exist on his own.

Then he inhales shakily and Spirit laughs and Stein can  _feel_  the movement all through the weapon’s body.

“ _Fuck_ ,” he manages, “Spirit,  _hold still_.”

“I’m not  _moving_ ,” the weapon protests, his voice high and trembling but laced with amusement too. His hands come up to slide over Stein’s back, trace the outline of his spine. “ _You_  should, though.”

Stein laughs without meaning to and takes his weapon’s advice, shifts his hips forward and it is  _better_ , heat is spiraling up his skin and spine and Spirit is all around him and this is how they are  _supposed_  to be, a singular thing, and Spirit sighs and Stein kisses his shoulder. Both their hands are stroking over bone and muscle, outlining elbow or hip or stomach, and Stein isn’t sure if he is moving his hips or if it is Spirit shifting under him but they are falling into a pattern, motion pulling friction into spikes of pleasure, and then he gets one of his hands down between them and wraps his fingers around Spirit’s cock. The weapon laughs and and gasps and chokes on the sound, arches his hips up into the contact and the movement is blinding, hot and slick and  _so_  tight, so much more pressure than Stein has  _ever_  felt before, he is barely moving and Spirit is barely moving and he is  _still_  not going to last at this rate, can feel the weight of pleasure threatening him with orgasm too-fast.

“Spirit,” he manages, and the weapon goes still and blinks up at him. This close Stein can see the ring of color around wide-dilated pupils, can see the individual lashes around his eyes.

“Stein?” The word is trembling with worry for all that Spirit’s whole face is flushed with pleasure, cheeks red and lips parted and eyes half-lidded.

“Hold still,” Stein says, and slides his hand up Spirit’s cock. Spirit groans, reaches out for Stein; he ends up with one hand against the meister’s hair and one gripping his arm as if he can affect Stein’s pace by changing his hold. Not that he needs to. Stein is a fast learner and Spirit is easy to read and between the two the meister is fairly sure he is better at giving Spirit what he wants than the weapon is himself. Right now he wants fast and hard, all the strength in Stein’s grip and all the dexterity of his fingers moving separately, and when the meister hooks his thumb to brush over the hyper-sensitive head of the weapon’s cock Spirit’s eyes shut and he groans and Stein doesn’t bother chastising him for the buck of his hips, partially because the weapon is past controlling his own movements and partially because the motion reminds him of pleasure more immediate even than vicariously experiencing Spirit’s.

Stein can hear every shuddering breath Spirit takes, can feel the way the weapon’s breathing fractures in response to the movement of his hand. The power is thrilling, floods through his veins to mingle psychological with physical pleasure. When Spirit’s fingers go tight against Stein’s arm and his breathing speeds out of sync with the meister’s movements, Stein knows he’s close, too close to call back now. The meister angles his hips back to thrust forward into Spirit, tightens his grip and shifts his fingers, and Spirit’s hand curls into a fist in his hair and the weapon’s expression goes tight with the familiar almost-pained grimace of focus, and when he comes Stein can  _feel_  the convulsions of pleasure ripple through him, can see it on Spirit’s face and hear it in his groaned exhales, and the meister sucks in air like he can inhale Spirit’s response into his lungs and mouth and throat, imagines he can taste it on his tongue.

He doesn’t let go entirely, though his grip loosens, just braces his hand against the mattress and moves over and in Spirit, and the grip on his hair and arm have gone gentle and Spirit is laughing, delight suffusing the sound, and after a moment he starts to talk, half-whispering unformed words, “yes” and “good” and “Stein,” mostly the name over and over again, and with his head against Spirit’s shoulder Stein can see red hair and can hear the shape of Spirit’s mouth over his name and can  _feel_  everything, heat and texture and sticky come on his fingers and the slide of sweat against his waist, Spirit’s leg half-hooked around him and Spirit’s fingers leaving trails over his skin, and rising weight gathers at his spine, digs into his stomach, and then shatters out to tingle through his arms and leg and skin and blind his vision.

Stein doesn’t mean to say anything, but when he comes back into his body he is forming Spirit’s name soundlessly into the weapon’s shoulder and his supporting hand is against long soft hair, and Spirit is still laughing and still brushing his fingers over Stein’s skin. The meister slides free and drops his weight sideways so he’s on the bed more than he is on Spirit. Spirit comes up on an elbow, reaches out to press a palm against Stein’s far shoulder, and bends over to ghost his lips over the near one.

“I love you,” he says, as casually as if he always says this in Stein’s bed.

The meister tips his head so he can just see Spirit out of one eye and arches his eyebrow, but what he says is, “I love you too.”

Spirit smiles, and tips his head to rest against Stein’s shoulder like a pillow, and with Spirit’s weight against his back and Spirit’s fingers against his skin Stein sighs, and shuts his eyes, and lets himself relax into sleep.


End file.
